Hopkins School Board Meeting June 2nd, 2026

001Hi everybody. Welcome. I'm going to invite my board colleagues down to the front of the table because we have a special recognition this evening. Tonight we're honored to recognize the educators and staff members who are retiring from Hopkins public schools this year. Together, the retirees we celebrate this evening represent more than 290 years of service to our students, our families, it is amazing, and our community. They have spent their careers teaching, counseling, supporting, and nourishing the students of Hopkins in classrooms and hallways and in lunchrooms. Through years of patient work, steady presence, and deep care, they have shaped thousands of student experiences and helped make Hopkins the district it is today. To each of them, we say thank you. Good evening everyone on behalf of Hopkins public schools and our school board and all of

002the amazing staff and students and family community here in Hopkins. I also want to echo the congratulations to all of our 2026 retirees and what you have built and what you are leaving is a true legacy and you will always be remembered. Tonight we are reading the names of retirees who have given us their permission to be celebrated publicly and there are other dedicated retirees who made a special request to leave in a more private way but we are also grateful for them and truly to each of you for the many years of service and the personal heartfelt and personal sacrifice all of the impact that you have had on our students and on Hopkins public school staff. You have shaped the current experiences of our students and you are building legacies within our students

003themselves as they walk into their bright future. So we honor you today and what we're going to do is a special celebration and so you see the royal blue carpet and we're going to invite you to walk the length of the carpet when you hear your name and you will receive a certificate when you come up here 2026 retirees we'd like you to start to your left and shake board members hands and then hang out up here because we will take a group photo at the end and so maybe we'll take a group photo with board members and retirees and then family members could also come up and it'll be one giant group photo and we have our interim comms director who will be taking that photo. So this is what we do for our

004scholars often at the school board meetings so we'll tell you what we tell them. If you know you're a retiree if you could go to the end of the royal blue runner so that you're ready to walk down when we call your name that would be excellent. Okay we are beginning with Ann Anastad who is a preschool teacher at Meadowbrook Elementary 24 years of service. Is Ann here this evening? Well let's celebrate her anyway and next we have Sarah Bruckner fourth grade teacher at Eisenhower Elementary 15 years of service. Congratulations Sarah and Kim Brody second grade teacher at Meadowbrook Elementary that was Meadowbrook Elementary 26 years of service. Carla Carlson title one and learning support teacher Tanglin Elementary 25 years of service. Robin Frober fifth grade teacher Meadowbrook Elementary 35 years of service. Kate Humphrey

005Kate are you here? Kate is not here. Let's celebrate her. Kate is a fourth grade teacher at Glen Lake Elementary 26 years of service. Tom Cavalli. Tom are you here? I didn't see Tom at the celebration. Okay so Tom is a teacher at transition plus and Tom provided 25 years of service and next Todd Lascarbo. Todd is a social studies teacher at Hopkins High School 36 years of service. Jody Marcuson. Jody is a math teacher at North Middle School 34 years of service. Chris Torberg. Chris is an SLP speech language pathologist at Harley Hopkins Family Center 28 years of service. Lori Volkert. Lori nutrition services Hopkins High School five years of service and the Andrea Yesnes. Andrea is a counselor at North Middle School 37 years of service. So retirees we invite you to come

006to the center come in front of the board members we're going to take a picture and then we'll invite family up here as well. and families families coming up and friends whoever came to the party yes we're up can't see you stand on your toes i'm a tiki toke look at me thank you thank you again thank you to our 2026 retirees for the amazing incredible years of service we are going to begin our board workshop you are more than welcome to stay but i imagine you might have more exciting things to do have a great evening okay well thank you all for being part of that recognition and celebration i would like to get started officially on our board workshop for the hopkins public schools it is june 2nd 2026 and our next order

007of business is the solar for schools grant i would like to invite director mazali up to the table and turn it over to dr mary piri reid thank you chair andresen so this agenda item is about future solar energy opportunities and as we explore what those opportunities are we have invited ideal energies to provide an overview of the potential work and so with gino mazali who is our assistant director in buildings and grounds we have rich ragats with ideal energies which is a minnesota-based commercial solar developer and ideal energies has more than 600 operational systems including over 60 minnesota school districts and so we're excited to learn about the solar for schools grant and what that opportunity provides and thank you for being here thank you for having us i would also like to do

008a shout out to laura she has been awesome in the grant process and helping us along the way and she's done a lot of work to help us so she's not here tonight with us but i would like her to be recognized for sure laura hatsell correct yes yes good thank you yeah yeah well thank you gino's been a joy to work with too he's really knows what he's doing and appreciated all his hard work we had a we spent a lot of time trying to find the opportunities because structurally some of the buildings have some things that aren't going to allow the additional five weights five pounds a square foot for the capacity to be added to the roof so we really had to look through the portfolio of buildings and find appropriate roof

009ages that also work structurally and we were able to do that so thank you and appreciate the opportunity to present to you so rich ragots from ideal energies and we've been around since 2010 we're vertically integrated we've done now over 700 on-site projects we've done 231 school projects across the state and 91 projects in the first eight rounds of this solar for schools program and then in this round nine that we're talking about here you have three projects of the 17 that we're doing in round nine and fortunately this round nine they changed the rules a little bit so all of the projects in the round nine a hundred percent of the cost of a system is given to you by a tax a direct pay tax credit and solar for schools department of commerce

010grant and i can kind of go through the presentation if that works so that's a little bit about ideal we're vertically integrated so we have everything in house to do this including the equipment structural engineer installation crews all engineers to make this possible there's a that's actually orinose activities district install there and that's a self-ballasted system so what we're talking about is a solar array that just sits on top of the roof membrane where there's no punctures to the membrane we have slip sheets and things like that that protect the roof so that they sit up there and create energy and they'll be at a 10 degree pitch and directly south facing is the ideal layout that i think we have for all three of these projects again here's a list of a bunch of

011our customers and the school space here's the first one which this is alice smith and this is a 89.96 kilowatt solar array on some of the sections out there at alice smith the next one there's north middle we're looking at a hundred and fifty eight point seven six kilowatt solar array on the north middle and the third one is tanglin which we're looking at a hundred and forty three point three two six kilowatt dc solar array and here's an example of alice smith so this looks like it's going to create in year one eleven thousand three hundred and nine dollars worth of energy savings for one of the three arrays and we can go through i think we have it for all three of them here uh the next one north middle is bigger so

012you're going to see about 19,796 dollars of energy savings in that first year and tanglin is 17,395 dollars of savings in year one and over the last five years excel energy has increased their utility rates by over 52 percent we're using a three and a half percent escalation here so this is a great way for you guys to hedge against future inflation with excel energy based on all the stuff that's going on with their grid i think the utility rates are going to be probably ten percent increases moving forward here so it's a great thing for you guys to do and here's a so a hundred percent of the cost is paid for but how the program works in round nine where you there's an invoice that we'll give you for what we're doing you

013guys get that invoice you have to pay us and then 30 days later from the department of commerce you guys get reimbursed so there's kind of a cash flowing that needs to happen with this for that 60 percent of it is through the department of commerce and then there's another 40 percent that we get from the federal department of treasury irs and we'll help you with that direct paid paperwork that is one that will probably take longer than 30 days we're estimated it'll take about eight months to happen but we'll help you through that process we've done it with other schools okay and i think we have yeah so we've basically gotten funds reserved we are working on a so the readiness application was approved we've completed the structural and electrical analysis that's well in

014progress we're working on interconnection applications with excel energy that we need to get going as part of the final grant application and that full grant application is due on july 2nd and we also provide curriculum that's up to the three current learning standards that can be hoping it'll be incorporated into the classroom and we also have some monitoring equipment there's a web-based portal that'll show you how much energy was created created daily weekly monthly there's some feel-good stuff to it some interesting stuff for the kids to learn about renewable energy and that's next slide i think that's about the curriculum again up to the three current learning standards and there's that monitoring platform that shows you a screen with some interesting things on there that the kids can learn about and so love to just

015get the affirmative that you want to want us to keep moving forward with this application we want to come back ideally on june 23rd to get final approval on this and there's some things we need need to do before that to advertise in the local paper things we have to do to meet the criteria of the round nine solar for schools that's basically it i'm here for questions thank you i really appreciate the presentation and also for the opportunity i just had a quick context setting question i know that i think it was before i got on the board but if you could give me a date when did we first install solar panels at the high school if i was to take my best guess it would probably be like 2017 2018 i think

016those contracts started that feels about as i guess right so this has been a long time coming to expand this program to other buildings in the district and and i'm thrilled that this is before us this evening so thank you for being here any other questions from my board colleagues chair andreson yes um thank you so much for being here and i am of course excited to hear that between your guys's work and laura hetzel's work that we have the opportunity to take advantage of all of these grants given that there's some right unrest some potential like especially at the federal level of if various funds will continue is there any risk when you say there's eight months potentially until we get reimbursed from a certain group is there any risk to us that such

017funding disappears or doesn't come through no i don't see any risk all of the 91 projects we've worked on in the first eight rounds have funds and what they do once once they have funds reserved in the readiness application phase which you guys do have what the department of commerce does is they escrow those to an account so that account is for you guys to take advantage of the funds in there and also the so that's the one source which is 60 percent of the total cost of the three systems and the other 40 comes from the department well from the federal department of treasury and that's part of the one big beautiful bill from last year july 4th and we have so as long as we have contracts that get signed before july 4th

018and there's a six percent deposit that's needed what that does is locks in the tax benefits which is a 40 direct pay tax credit for your district then there's no question that's law and they have to go back to congress and act of congress to change that but so you should be good with i don't think any risk associated with the payment okay i appreciate that thank you what's that i appreciate that thank you okay thank you chair anderson yes yeah thank you thank you also i echo the um for your work and for this possibility before us i just wondered if you could give a little context as a new board member and i don't know that you need to go back to 2017 or 18 but you came before us tonight kind of

019what led to us working with ideal and just a few sentences of how we got here exactly um so we know in the community knows sure um well first of all i've presented on utilities before in the past in my utility presentation um i did discuss solar and what the district currently has right now we do have solar gardens as well as our physical solar on site um it was the group was passionate about adding solar if possible and what that may look like um so i knew kind of then that it was a passion of the group to add solar rich actually reached out to me with the grant opportunity and said uh that you know this is um could be free for your district and it's a grant opportunity um i wouldn't want

020you to miss out i've actually worked with ideal energies i was one of those projects in my previous district i was in so we just finished that up last summer right yep so i've worked with ideal energy before and that's kind of how we got here as they reached out for the grant you know we looked into it we looked into our buildings looked into which sites work due to as he said like roof capacity and what it can hold um then those buildings are identified through that way plus we looked at roof ages um it's you don't really want to put solar on an older roof that you know you're going to replace in four to five years it's very uh it's not very cost effective it costs a lot of money to remove

021the solar and put it back up so we looked at our newest roof that could handle that type of uh structure on top of it so that's kind of how we got here yeah thanks for the presentation makes a lot of sense i just had a question on kind of how to read like the slides eight nine and ten which shows the annual savings um so i noticed that the electricity produced per year kind of goes down a little bit is that just due to panels aging don't produce as much or something yeah it's a degradation so the there's 72 solar cells in a solar panel and they're connected by a silicon and so when that's exposed to mother nature that kind of breaks down a little bit and it's industry standard is the cells

022break down and degrade by 0.5 percent every year so we're taking the production of the system every year and reducing that by 0.5 percent and just to let you know the manufacturer has a production based warranty that what they're telling you it'll produce in year one after 30 years it needs to be producing 85 percent of that number so it degrades by 15 percent of the production over that 30 year period but you still have an asset that is still producing a lot of energy thank you and then um in the gray columns there's the energy expense savings per year so i assume that that would mean you know based on the energy that we're producing at the site we're not buying that energy from someone else so that's what gives us the first gray

023column yeah so it's up on the screen here i sorry i should have uh talked about that so the the program we're we're using the solar for schools as a grant to pay for part of the system but what we're doing is we're opting into what's called the the photovoltaic or pv credit tariff and it's just to check the box opt-in tariff and that we fought excel energy to get that program established back in 2019 it took us five years they admitted that solar on the grid helps them with their peak load capacities as a result they want to give rate payers that are adopting and putting solar on a benefit for doing that because then they don't have to go buy the um as much uh expensive backup energy and as a result the

024hours of one to seven they give you an extra eight cents per kilowatt hour that goes towards reducing your demand charges and so eight cents uh the hours of one to five about 50 of the energy during the entire year is created during the hours of one to five so you're basically getting um four cents for every kilowatt hour that's produced during the entire year as a benefit to reduce your demand charges so it really helps uh make it a better deal and that's a program that's been around since 2019 so that's the first gray column is the this essentially excels giving us a break on how much we pay because we're producing some stuff our own that goes yeah that's actually the second gray column the first gray column the 12,376 in this example

025on the screen that's based on your rate plan so that's a direct reduction on your bill from the rate plan that you guys are are on for that l h tanglin building and then uh that five thousand is that five thousand yeah five thousand dollars five thousand nineteen that's the pb credit that's going to reduce what you pay for demand charges during the month that's for the energy created from the hours of one to seven and those two numbers add up to your 17,000 in this example does that make sense it does so so just one more time the the energy the electricity that we're producing at tanglin doesn't like directly go to tanglin it goes off into the grid and gets moved around by excel right well uh no there'll be a bidirectional meter

026that excel energy installs and with that bidirectional meter it'll keep track of the energy that's created the energy that's used there and if there's any times most schools don't send it back to the grid but if you didn't use all the energy it it would go back to the grid and the the bidirectional meter it's been backwards and you'd get credit for that and what that does is sit on your bill as a kilowatt hour credit so you're not having to sell it back to excel energy and buy it sell it back for a wholesale rate you're getting the retail value for that because the kilowatt hours sit on your bill and you get that benefit all right thank you so much for that explanation i appreciate it chair andreson um i was wondering if

027students who were interested in like renewable and energy or engineering would have the chance to shadow with you guys while you're installing it to get like a better understanding i love this well we're open to working with students to do that but we got to make sure that liability and safety are a factor so that's something we can talk about okay is there an environmental science class at the high school perhaps i think so that might be something close to it as an elective but i'm not sure yeah that might be a good connection for ninth graders yeah i love that that's it to do we do have some videos of like our structural engineers our master electricians that talk about the process and some of that stuff that it's interesting for the kids to

028learn about yeah i did somewhere on one of these sides that it mentioned that you actually produce some a lesson that is allowable in some science classes some curriculum yeah solar curriculum yeah one of the requirements for this grant is we have to have education materials and laura has already met with the three principles of those buildings to develop a learning lesson plan that could be developed around solar and ideal energies also has some plans i think that they give us and recommend just as materials that we could use as well it is one of the requirements of the grant so that's like a lesson within our larger science curriculum about solar and yeah and so those plans we've been doing this for 12 years with schools and so like i said before they're up

029to the three current learning standards and we have modules so you can use one or more of those and they're geared towards like fifth and sixth grade science and then there's a high school one also so interesting way to learn about the renewable energy chair and recent yeah adina your question made me remember that we have an envirothon club at our high school so it's the longest running environmental science and well envirothon is the longest running environmental science competition in the world and our students went to state for that and won so that's really cool are you on that i'm not but i i was i do remember hearing about it yes so that's awesome so that would be a great so we can include those students who's there do you know who they're i

030think it's mr samler john samler i like how we're not completing sentences sorry i wonder if our insurance policy includes students on roof access but oh i don't think we'll confirm or deny that any other questions well thank you so much for being here and again i'm really excited that this expansion is happening and that we found a really great partner and really good grants so terrific all around good news thank you awesome yeah thanks for having me thank you thank you very much thank you both thanks and that takes us to our next agenda item which is year end data review i would invite um directors urdle and vang up to the table and looks like there's more than that coming so welcome and turn it over to dr mary peri read thank you

031chair andresen so um just for a quick framing for community members we do a quarterly achievement report for our school board so this is a very important presentation that includes data informing us how well our children and students are learning and important context is that in may the new york times ran a an analysis of more than 10 000 school districts and found that student achievement across the country remains overall below pre-pandemic levels with declines in both reading and math which had erased years of prior progress in many communities the report if you read it also highlighted that recovery across the country has been uneven with some districts making significant gains and others continuing to face challenges around attendance engagement academic acceleration etc so um of course here we are in our local and immediate

032context hopkins and we also have some challenges and many successes however our prediction is that with the work that we've been doing strengthening our systems building conditions for belonging and high expectations training our teachers and delivering high quality tier one instruction and literacy math and across content areas we are expecting trajectory changing results and we have the opportunity to check in on this progress at least in a public way in a quarterly basis but of course in the schools and in our instructional leadership teams we are always looking at that data so i'm really grateful to our director of innovation design and learning dr urdle and our literacy specialist and coordinator kim smith and our assessment and data coordinator ea vang and together we will provide some information about our end of year achievement report

033in literacy math graduation and some other high school outcomes and then open it up for questions so thank you team thank you thanks for having us here this evening as dr mary perey reid mentioned we've been coming approximately quarterly and just as a reminder this slide deck that you have actually has all of the updates we wanted even though it's really long we wanted to keep them in one place for your reference as we kind of progressed through this year with these quarterly updates one of the things that we noticed was that some of the timings on when the updates are happening are a little off considering when screeners are happening in the schools and things like that and so i wanted to mention now and i'll mention this again at the end board members

034i will be creating hopefully fairly short fairly painless survey to get your feedback on specifically these data presentations so that we can better understand how to plan for next year given the assessment windows and things like that but also things that maybe you would have liked to deeper dive on or would like more information about so we can kind of priority prioritize these presentations for you for next year based on on what you'd like to know more about so just be keeping that in mind and i'll mention it again at the end so we're going to start out with an update on literacy this is kim smith she's our literacy specialist and like a little bit famous in our state because she has testified at the legislature and she sort of is at the center

035of a statewide literacy leadership network and so we're really proud of her work and her expertise so take it away kim thank you so the first slide that you're going to see is an overview of the local literacy plan so my main role is making sure that we are not only in compliance but using all aspects of literacy to benefit our students and since the read act passed in 2023 every year it kind of goes back to the legislation and there's there's changes and and adjustments and so part of what i do is keep updated on those on that list there you'll see sort of the local literacy plan for this year it's due on june 15th and so there'll be a new one very very shortly that you will also get sent directly and

036it's also posted on our website and mde's website you'll see lots of places there where it's either updated and different than it's been in the past or where it's newly required or new altogether we didn't even see a draft of it until about two weeks ago so it's changing quickly and a lot of work you'll also see i put on a link there the mde statewide read act report it's about six months late you probably saw in the news last week and so they're also trying to build their infrastructure to be able to collect that across the state so that's the statewide report that i linked in there just so you could see it the next slide shows where we're at with our phase one training so you've heard lots about letters we are currently

037at 96.5 percent of required teachers on track for that july 1 deadline for phase one teachers that includes k3 teachers we've also trained most of our fourth and fifth any english learner teachers any special education teachers k-12 any el teachers k-12 that support reading and anybody who's a reading interventionist so we're real close there and i wanted to share a few slides specific to feedback we got from the the training group that was finishing this year so that first one is which cohort did you belong to and it when we looked at this cohort this was the people who didn't volunteer to participate in one of our earlier cohorts and when their overall feedback came back about 50 said they did not receive adequate training in their undergraduate programs to feel ready to teach reading

038and so the rest of the slides are sort of related to that to what extent did letters deepen your understanding you can see very high scores there and then the bottom two your overall satisfaction with letters was very very high and how confident you now feel in identifying students literacy needs so really really positive feedback about the training tons and tons of positive feedback about our facilitators and the amazing job that they've done so overall a really good experience the next slide shows for our paraprofessionals one of the things we had to do is with limited funding shift to having local certified facilitators for the paraprofessional training instead of sending everybody to bright works up in ardent hills and so we had our letters trainers for the most part became our local certified facilitators we

039led about 10 different sessions across the school year one at each elementary sessions at each elementary school as well as some district-wide trainings right now we're at about 77 percent of our paraprofessionals who are trained for the july 1 deadline we're hoping to still sneak in a june date and then we have august 19th and 20th that will be required for anybody who has not yet trained before they start in the fall for phase two which is you can see there it's fourth through 12th grade it talks about it being people who teach foundational reading instruction but really this is things like if you teach vocabulary in your content area if you teach reading comprehension as part of what you do which we know crosses all content areas and so we are looking to train

040a large number of people especially at both middle schools and virtual edu and then some all of the required people at our high school as well as anyone who wants to opt into that training so we're looking especially for some social studies and science teachers who really want to look at how they can support literacy through their content areas to be kind of leads within their department the phase two training that we've selected is strive part of the reason that we selected this one is it starts out with disciplinary literacy and digs deep right away into mtss and our assessment systems whereas the others tend to kind of just be like letters but a little bit less elementary focused the phase two teachers are required to be done with training by july one so we

041are mapping that out for our calendar next year and we'll be doing that training next year we'll look at the screening updates for literacy so the first thing kind of to know is we are completing our fourth cohort of letters training it's almost 300 staff members the six that started the cohort in 1921 did their two years and those are mostly our letters facilitators now they started early then they did that led their first cohort of about 25 in 21 to 23 last year we had 120 teachers who were finishing up their volume two and then the 130 that are in cohort four started last year and they are finishing up now in june so overall we have almost 300 staff who've completed letters training this is also our second year of a 30 minute

042of core foundational skills instruction using ufly fire or sips which is our core foundational materials we still have some work to do around pacing with the dictation assessments and with integrity to the curriculum next year we will have all of our schools using the same the same foundational skills which will help us to build that consistency and coherence across the system so we'll look at a little bit of our screening data part of the reason i put that previous slide in is because we're looking at are those moves that we've made around teacher training and around having a core foundational curriculum are those impacting our outcomes so that's really kind of part of why i wanted those pieces to kind of set the frame for looking at the screening data as we look we're going

043to be looking at fast bridge and so just to kind of orient you to that at the bottom of those bars it's real small and you'll have to zoom in it will tell you the administration timeline so we're going to be looking at spring of last year compared to spring of this year so how are our kids changing over that the way that fast bridge reports it's based on the calendar year so right now it'll say end of year 25 because the initial assessment was given in 25 and then it's over the course so you'll see end of year it'll say 24 but it was really last spring and then end of year 25 which is current data pulled very quickly because the window just closed on friday so just know that that's kind of

044that the other piece is the early math and early reading we're going to be looking at early reading that's k1 only and it doesn't have the same four categories as the other assessments do it doesn't have a meets target in part because kinder and first they're learning those early foundational skills and all of the the proficiency indicators are kind of backwards mapped from state like normed tests and it's too hard to do that with those early literacy things like segmenting so that's why you're either kind of on the right track or you're close or you're not quite there and then once we get closer to kind of reading standards that's where you can actually meet the target so the first one we're going to look at is that early reading this is the district so

045you can see last year we were at about 39 percent proficient and this year as a district we are at 46 percent proficient and then when we look and break it out by by grade level last year was 36 percent proficient you're now 43 and in first grade 42 to 48 so we are seeing some really good growth with our k1 again i'll tell you it's still not where i want it to be i i won't go away from here till we're at 100 but but it's we're in the right direction consistently at our with our early literacy data the next slide shows our cbmr so this is the one that i actually most pay attention to this is a one-on-one timing with a teacher and a student where they read for one minute so

046the teacher is listening for what kind of mistakes does the student make how many words are they reading correctly in one minute of a grade level passage so it is our closest measure to actual performance there's no multiple choice guessing there's no clicking because you're frustrated they are working with someone that they probably have a close relationship with so it is our most accurate and reliable measure of grade level reading and you can see last year we were about 49 percent proficient and as you look across first second and third we're going up in first and second we had a dip in third not really sure why so we'll dig into that a little bit more as we can kind of break out by school and by teacher to look a little bit more as

047to why that was dropping there fourth was up and fifth was up we we give the cbmr all the way up to fifth grade it's only required through third but when we talked about backing off of some of those subtests with assessments our teachers said no like that's the one we really value we want to keep it and so we will keep that one in place because teachers know that it's telling them the most that they need to know about students as readers the next one is a reading this is much more like a mca like reading comprehension passages multiple choice this is where we sometimes see that it's a little hard to measure how well kids are really doing because especially by spring and having done mcas and access and all those other tests

048there's a tendency to click a little bit faster but as a district we're pretty flat there you can see up a little bit at certain grades flat at certain grades we'll look we like to look at this one comparing it to sort of our mcas just because they tend to kind of mirror each other so we'll see that when it comes out remember the mca is mca4 it's the first year of the new mca reading and so we won't have those results until october which is later than we typically have and then you can see sixth is having a drop so we're looking at that we are adding a royal um royals rising reading class that's universal for all sixth graders starting next year as part of the design course in part because our middle

049school teachers were saying we're noticing some gaps kids aren't reading as much outside of school or we've during covid we were able to do less reading and hold them accountable and so really trying to get that back in and support students just getting a more time reading grade level text so that will be happening in that grade as well so we'll hope to see some bumps there coming mid-year by next year next ilsa is traveling with her son who's at college orientation so i'm going to do just a really brief overall math update um so again we're looking kind of at two different things the implementation of the new math curriculum at k5 as well as sort of some of those early indicators that we might watch for related to how it's going so ilsa

050have a more detailed report for you soon they've been collecting implementation data looking at both teacher and student focus groups and interviews they warped those up she's still doing them right before she left town on friday so they've been doing focus groups at every elementary school with interviews with both teachers and students and then they've collected lots of learning walk data that they'll have ready to present to you and then just looking at the end of the year screening i kind of quickly pulled it like i did for reading it's definitely still being processed because it didn't close till friday but early indicators show either flat or slightly increased outcomes over spring of 2025 so comparing it to last year's we're actually i would not have expected but we are actually flatter increasing from where

051we were last year which is a really good sign with an early implementation okay thank you okay so you're probably wondering we why we're reporting spring 2025 graduation rate today and not earlier and so i just kind of want to provide some context before we dive into the data the minnesota department of education so mde releases graduation rates one year after the cohort graduates and that's because of summer extension data verification processes so what that means is that the class of 2026 this year we won't the graduation rate won't be available until next spring 2027 and so just providing some context there also minnesota uses the federal required adjusted cohort graduation rate this follows a cohort of students from the start of ninth grade and tracks the percentage who graduated within four years five six

052or seven years and the data presented today here reflects the four-year rate and so just to clarify what you're looking at and i took the data right from the minnesota report card so if you're ever curious where the data comes from all right so for our district as a whole the class of 2025 last year four-year four-year graduation rates is 86 mpe also reports student outcomes as continuing dropout and unknown which you can also see to your right there so 86 percent of students graduated 9.3 percent continue 2.3 dropped out and 2.3 are also unknown across our two schools so i broke it down now we're looking at two of our high schools at hopkins high school the four-year graduation rate increased by 2.4 percentage percentage points to 88 percent of the cohort of 435

053students 383 graduated last year additionally 8.3 percent are continuing 2.1 percent have dropped out and 1.6 are classified as unknown at virtual edu secondary we also see that the four-year graduation rate remain at 66.7 percent of 36 students in the cohort 24 graduated so it's a slight smaller total number of students there additionally 22.8 percent are continuing 5.6 percent have dropped out and 5.6 are unknown so as we move forward just a reminder that we won't have a graduation rate for this year until next spring and so yeah dr urdle you'll talk about high school celebration and post-secondary readiness yep i get the light lift on this one so this is a lot more meaningful if you see it in person so if you haven't done that of course i would invite the board and

054any interested community members i think dr mary perry reid said once that you were there and like you realized that you were staring at it and like 30 minutes had passed and i know that happens with us when we go to the high school for events too it's always so exciting to see where students are going and what their plans are so just a nod to this project that dr cool has taken on it's just really cool and it's a really great thing i think for our community and then just some data overall some other things to celebrate that our graduating seniors took 312 ap classes 83 students were pseo students and 174 took at least one cis class overall we had almost a thousand students taking ap classes um 113 participated in pseo 397

055earned a cis credit and then of course my passion area is the bilingual seal and we had 39 students earn a bilingual seal and what's always cool is to like because the languages vary from year to year we always have chinese and spanish of course but this year we had a japanese which is really neat i saw some students who attempted the seal in swahili um and then just a tidbit we're um i'm not sure if we've talked about this at the board table before but we did get a native language revitalization grant and so we're going to be adding indigenous language instruction at our high school too so we're super excited about that and so maybe we will have some graduates that have some bilingual seals and indigenous indigenous languages in our near future

056with that i would take any questions and then again board members just a reminder i promise to keep your the feedback survey brief but really we do aim to be responsive to the data that you want to focus in on and whether that is um certainly always um we want to be looking at academic outcomes and things like that and we collect a lot of data in our system um related to academics behavior all kinds of things and so um i would really appreciate your input as we kind of finalize this year and then look to next year to continue to iterate based on what you and our community would like to know more about thank you yes thank you all so much for the presentation um i am impressed with educators who continue to

057show up and like just do this work because it gets difficult and i think i've been sharing all year because it's my first time doing it i've been a testing coordinator and the stress that came from administering like tests back to back were real i'm still feeling the impact of it like right now and so was wondering is there an opportunity for testing coordinators to or maybe one or two to come to talk about like their experience um with administering the mca i know like this year for um for example like the m test and all mca were new and so i know that that caused a little bit confusion for me um but also want to understand for newer testing coordinators and more experience what are some best practices because i understand that their

058um their um preparation also impacts test scores as well so is there an opportunity to hear from one of them okay and i appreciate you bringing that up because um i think the other thing that you've commented on over the year director roper is we heavily rely on this data to tell us things about our instruction and how things are going for kids and so sort of the integrity of the data is also reliant on many factors like test coordination like test environment and so i think um i appreciate you bringing that up and i do think it would be um we definitely can bring some test coordinators to share their experiences the other thing that we're um the other work that we're doing in service to our balanced assessment system is also closely and

059carefully monitoring by student group how much time students are being assessed and it's a lot and it's it's going to continue to grow and so i think it would be helpful for our board and our community to also see that that information as well um because unfortunately or fortunately i mean we we need to know um and have reliable measurements of how students are growing and um a lot of the requirements mean that some of our students who might have the most growth to make are also the ones being tested more than others and so it's a really um it's a tension i think that we really face in our system and it's not just us it's it's education in general thank you so much thanks i appreciate that context being brought to this conversation

060because yes the assessment themselves make a big difference on the data that we're looking at um i just had a couple of of quick questions um one is about as you were talking about the different cohorts and the way it's been implemented on the the letters training um i just had a question and i'm sure you've thought of it but this is the first time i've thought about it i think our numbers are great but then what happens with new staff how do we catch them up so we will have a year one of letters starting next year as well we've got about 35 teachers we put off putting our i call them baby teachers like our new to profession teachers um when we were starting letters two years ago we did not put them

061in a cohort we decided like let them get their feet under transition to the role um so we have a probably about 20 teachers that have been new to our system um and we'll be entering their third year that will start next year and then other teachers we've brought in either because special ed reading intervention is kind of positions that require it that they will also start next year great and is there like a like a reciprocity like if someone has come from a different district and they learned a different yes so one of the things we're working with hr on is getting a checkbox so that people can put like yes i'm redact trained or no i'm not right now i email people just to get but we do have a couple people in

062our system that have taken corola and a couple people who've taken the carry all training so yeah people can come into our system having had the training somewhere else and meet the qualifications for those positions great thanks and then i just had one other question looking at the data um i and i appreciate comparing like last year to this year but one of the questions and it was when i was looking at the the big dip in the sixth grade um data i then thought i'm like well i know at least some of those sixth graders um and so that made me think are we so are we essentially comparing different groups data yes so it's different cohorts of students yes yes so i think that's also significant to think about like you can kind

063of if you know that cohort that makes sense then that it's not necessarily um anyway thank you for that clarification and we we typically try to follow the cohort data it takes longer fastbridge doesn't report or allow us to look at cohorts so then it means we have to export it out and then ian her team have to do all the manipulation on the back end to follow those groups look at the same group yeah it's over time and that's probably meaningful information to to be able to say okay this group has grown this much um because right now we're kind of comparing last year's sixth graders to this year's and this year's sixth graders are the ones that were most impacted by covid yes in the early grades so yeah thank you any other

064questions when we look at that factor then the data is reflective a reflective of instruction and fidelity of the curriculum and how well students are learning right because we're looking at what needs to change instructionally since we're comparing different cohorts but we use that data to inform the next instructional moves for the current cohorts that's right yeah kinder and first is our best measure right now of those teachers who've been through the training and have been using the foundational skills material over two years so those are our most reliable right now yes i have a couple of quick questions um hopefully easy ones um virtual edu um you said 34 i just want to make sure i heard there there's only 30 there were 34 seniors or 36 36 okay um how many total students

065are in virtual edu do we have that number um off no i don't off the top of my head i want to say it's in the 160s yeah i think it's around 150 right now yeah okay and is the program like profitable do we operate it at a loss i'm just curious number wise like if it's a program worth continuing to invest in so there's a couple unique things about virtual edu first um it is a program that we have to think seriously about retaining especially for our older students but families with um littler kids so elementary grades that's a less popular venue for um providing educational services in a virtual environment um secondly the population of students that we serve at virtual edu is um has our students at virtual edu have many unique

066stories and paths for how they arrived at virtual edu so those students and families have some really unique situations that um provide us an opportunity to truly personalize service there um there is a higher percentage of students of color and students who qualify for educational benefits at virtual edu as compared to our brick and mortar sites so it's a really unique population and i would say that the staffing model becomes more self-sustaining at the older grades because it attracts students who are you know grade six through twelve but we just have to think critically about whether it we can um sustain it for younger students okay so right now we're doing k we're offering k through twelve but it may not be no right now we're offering is it three through grades three through twelve

067three through twelve correct okay so and that's sunsetting so starting next year will be six six through twelve next year okay yes great thank you for the clarification i just wanted to understand the process and what's being looked at um and then curious with respect to the ap numbers that you showed yes um obviously very impressive so proud of everyone that's working so hard in our high school um curious what these numbers look like compared to prior years do we have more students taking ap classes um and pseo and cis don't expect you to risk to yeah to know this minute but it'd be interesting to see um what the trend looks like sure absolutely we can definitely look at that um and i do want um i think the other thing to mention along

068with that is um what what we also care about so in some ways our participation in ap pseo cis is a culmination of all of the preparation and so part of the reason that dr camphy included um ap classes as sort of the dipstick for how we're doing even starting in preschool in our achievement and integration plan is to really monitor and track are we stable and then we also of course want to look at who is participating so i appreciate that i would love to see both a breakdown you got it can i think we do get that report every year we do could we compare it does anyone have last year's yeah yes so i'm just looking at mr sammler's he sends in july he sends an overview of the number of students

069who took one or more ap classes the number of students who took one or more ap exams and also how many exams were taken by students i'm looking at the 24 report the 25 report and then he'll he'll send us the 26 report in july and then we could put together like a three-year trend report for the school board but in july for example we administered a total of 1169 exams oh we don't have total number of exams on this slide see 983 students let me just look for that number um i'm looking oh so in 2025 we had 708 students take at least one ap exam so okay yes so it looks like our numbers are rising but we can provide like a three-year trend at all of those data points in a couple

070of months and this might be one of the things that would be good to move to a fall presentation instead of the spring and what what um one natural ingredient for that of course was when we transitioned our ninth graders to the high school then there is a ninth grade ap course that students can take so that dramatically boosted our numbers because before that you would have to go to the high school to take an ap class thank you thank you thank you chair andreson yes thank you thanks for the presentation and i think in the the spirit of um looking at what you're reporting and just some noticings i had the the one is i was grateful for you highlighting the report card that mde puts out and just in looking at the report

071card which you can google report card mde and you will find it um it was just interesting to note though even some of the data reporting and how data can tell us particular stories or parts of stories but you don't see for instance in the report card overlay of i think about how treasurer heartland last meeting you brought up the amount of special education funding for instance we receive as a district and what's the breakdowns of economics and race and how is that impact because just even for instance taking a look at as a person who's still in bloomington right like taking a look at bloomington and then breaking it down according to the high schools you see very different graduate graduation rates you see different score rates in really significant ways and so i

072think just as we think about telling the story of our district and who we are what are we yes we want to help every single student each and every to quote our new incoming superintendent each and every student and also how do we tell honest and robust and and also beautiful stories about what makes our district unique and strong and that we see our diversity as part of the the brilliance of who we are and we do want to help support all of our students and some of our students are dealing with particular challenges that students in another district might not be dealing with in the same way and that's impacting our budget and our funding and so even when you look at um what was shared with us related to budgeting for this cycle

073and what districts are cutting and what are not how are these sorts of broader external decisions or things impacting so i think those questions around enrollment like overlay the history history as you're saying and trends of ap or other things seeing that being able to see any additional overlays so we also can situate for ourselves and our community stories about who we are as a district that can help us to tell honest and positive true stories about ourselves just to make your jobs harder or something but i'm just i'm thankful for this and um and for the work that folks are doing to also help us to continue to grow so thank you thank you um i also just want to say on on that note and then quickly we have another topic um that

074i think it was really impactful to hear that that graduation rate is not like a percentage of our students at the high school it is a it is following a cohort over four years and um i also think about you know the students i work with every day who are on a non-traditional path toward toward graduation and it looks different for them and their progress their attainment of different milestones is just as important and so that nine almost ten percent those are the kids we're talking about right the kids that are working hard every day just to to come to school and to reach the milestones that are perfectly appropriate for them so i think acknowledging that this is a data that is very specific um is really important when we craft that narrative so

075thank you for all of this information um and we will move on to our next topic thank you thank you for all the work thank your team as well and our next one is a really exciting one that we forgot to do at our organizational meetings so thank you um sarah for um continuing to bring it to my attention that you have not been partnered with um schools and neither has uh director hyman so we are going to go through that um i sent out a notice to all of the board members with our current um school pairings and it has been the practice of this board i think probably for the last four years to um four or five years to be partnered with a site throughout the district it allows board members to

076get to know um the district in a really organic way and that feels a lot more meaningful than sitting and looking at a slide deck presentation we actually get to go to the school we get to meet with the leaders there um i know that what what i've done in the past is being able to actually see school in session and i think that's really meaningful too so um we will first go through and people were offered to either raise their hand for a change or um or keep their current site so the goal is that every um site is assigned to a board member and that every board member has at least two um that they are responsible for and partnered with so with that and also director jow cannot be here tonight but

077he did say to me that he's happy to switch out or to keep so if somebody wants say eisenhower or west he's happy to exchange um so that's where he's at so i would leave it up to anyone to raise their hand and say hey i'd like to try someone else or what are your the new board members what are your interests chair andreson yes um i am open to taking one of the open ones um i would also i think um director thompson's children are aging out of meadowbrook so if he's willing to give up meadowbrook to me where my children currently are i would be open to that but i'll leave it to him to decide on that um otherwise i'm i'm happy to take any of the open ones um as well

078so director thompson would that be yeah i'm happy to hand off meadowbrook um go for that i'd like to keep north if possible right and did you have another one in mind to replace i think do you have a student at the high school do i see if that's already spoken for i wouldn't mind giving it up i feel known i feel like pretty free i would take it then i appreciate that okay so you've got north and the high school director hyman did you have another one you would like i'll leave it to clerk wilhelm garbers to pick first i'll just say that mine are my i also have i think alice smith and virtual edu and um mine is a free for all i would be happy to take something else chair andreson

079yes i uh i'll i'll uh take one for sure and then see where we end up but i i would love to have harley hopkins and yeah because you got a little yep and i got to go visit a couple weeks ago and was even more enamored so it's a fun one you get invited to really fun so do we need another for north or is that covered um hi oh sorry dr thompson you have north whoa i would take go ahead no you can go i would take virtual edu um with meadowbrook i just find it interesting and would love to know right next learn more about it yeah that's convenient i would actually like to take on um adult options because i've had gatewood for a long time and dr roper you have

080them too so i am willing to um pass the baton on gatewood as well i mean i'm up there all the time um so i would love for another school member to be able to experience the school environment um and i also was at the high school i'm also happy to um transition the high school as well um you were listed as having gatewood and tangling oh was that oh i see that i thought i had i thought that was just a error okay do you want to keep dangling i can keep tangling that's totally fine so i can keep tangling and t plus sure i can do t plus like how i just put it in your thing yeah i'll take the t's or did you want to keep the high school um no

081it's fine i can transition the high school over and then we need someone for gatewood they have chickens and goats and pigs and pigs and it's an outdoor school or immersion i would sort of i could take gate neither gatewood nor west do i know as much as i feel like i should as a fifth year board member and so since director jow's not here and said he didn't mind giving them up so so you currently have two did you want three i'd be willing to take three total so so west bd was gone what is it north or the high school is gone so then i don't even so you have alice smith gatewood and west middle school sure sarah you have harley would you like another school i i would happily take another

082school so uh it sounds like alice smith maybe back in is not in the mix yeah you can if you're interested in alice smith go but what else is open more than one at a yeah are you gonna uh so i'll just read through what we have currently great um so we have sarah you have harley hopkins and alice smith uh rachel has alice smith gatewood and west middle school kai you have north middle school and the high school i have glenn lake and adult options brook you have tanglin and t plus um jming has eisenhower and west middle school still and then johanna you have meadowbrook and virtual edu now do we have all the programs i have glenn lake what does sarah have besides harley does that sound good to everyone awesome thank

083you um and then i know previously there's been questions about protocols for getting involved um i think that how would you like that to be handled should directors reach out to the site leader um and ccu when they do so or to reach out through you yeah we've sent like a norm like one pager with norms and protocols so i can look for that and send it but normally just email the principal cc me and if you have questions just ask they're not very stringent okay but i'll look for that great well thank you everybody that gives us a little about five eight minutes for a break before our meeting starts at seven thank you thank you i'd like to invite my board colleagues back to the table welcome thank you everybody for being here

084with us this evening i will call this meeting of the hopkins school board to order at 702 p.m today is tuesday june 2nd we will get started our first order of business for tonight's meeting is open agenda and our first part of that is public comment our school board believes that hearing from our community members is crucial for implementing vision 2031 if you wish to contact the board via email instead of publicly commenting please use school dashboard at hopkins schools.org we have two public comment vehicles the first is to leave a voicemail and the number to do that is on our website and you can also show up here and be with us in person and make public and fill out a public comment card i have two of those here this evening are there

085any voicemails great thank you so we have two public comment cards this evening and i will go ahead and read the public comment guidelines which are lots of fun to sit through so bear with me as i pull that up so we host two sessions of public comment and one is at the beginning of the meeting each are 30 minutes the second is at the end public comments are for three minutes for each person so we only use the second session if we have more than 10 people which we do not this evening so our public comment will be hosted at the beginning of tonight's meeting here are guidelines for public comment please keep your comments to three minutes or less there is a timer here at the table i will give you a one

086minute reminder so that you aren't startled when your time is up public comment is for input only members of the school board will not respond directly to public comments that are made at this meeting no specific action will be taken at this meeting in response to comments if the board determines that action is appropriate the action will occur at a future board meeting if you have left your contact information on the comment card a district representative may follow up with you after the meeting i will recognize one speaker at a time only those speakers who are recognized will be permitted to speak individuals who interfere with or interrupt speakers the board or the proceedings may be asked to leave personal attacks on any individual including any other speaker during the public comment session are unacceptable

087as are obscenities or profanity persistence in making such remarks will end the individual's opportunity to address the board and may result in the individual being directed to leave i will rule out of order any statement that would violate state or federal law school board policy or the privacy rights of an individual minnesota's open meeting law prohibits the discussion of private educational data during an open meeting accordingly during the public comment session no person may discuss private educational data on an identifiable student the open meeting law also requires the board to close a meeting for preliminary consideration of allegations against an employee accordingly community members who have concerns about an employee or want to file a complaint or allegations against an employee are encouraged to contact the superintendent we ask you not to name an employee

088by name during your comments repeated violations of these time place and manner restrictions may also lead to the meeting being briefly recessed community members will have an opportunity to be heard within the limits of the law and subject to the time place and manner restrictions above thank you for participating in public comment this evening i would like to invite our first community member up to the board table eric mandel welcome thank you for being here this evening thank you all i am saddened to be here on thursday may 21st just two days after the school board heard the story of a black student subjected to horrible acts of overt racism and two months after the freshman student representative described facing anti-semitism at school my graduating senior showed me a photograph taken earlier that day in

089a gender-neutral bathroom at hopkins high this photo shows two large swastikas drawn in red ink on the ceiling of the bathroom along with a racist and homophobic slur within hours i received photos of two additional incidents this semester where similar large swastikas were emblazoned on the bathrooms at hopkins high we now have learned through reporting of the star tribune that there have been nine nine incidents in total since february nine incidents that were covered up by this administration and not disclosed the hate being freely expressed by students in hopkins with the slave auction flyer and these repeated drawings in the bathrooms these are not acts of misguided children these are the acts of children who have learned the warm embrace of the power of being in the in group and through the willful inactions of

090the district administration they now have been conditioned learning that the exercise of power over the physical emotional health and well-being of other human beings will be tolerated and can continue freely with nominal concern of being caught and even less concern of facing any form of meaningful punishment i am an ashkenazi zoo jew the descendant of urbanical lines that survived in the european diaspora for two millennia until those who had not fled to america were systematically murdered by the nazis along with six million jews and 12 million total human beings i walked through jewish ghettos eastern europe and the barracks of ashwitz i have stood witness to the crematoriums of buchenwald while the swastika stands for many things most of all it is a symbol of those who assert the power to decide who has the

091right to exist here at one minute they say that history does not repeat itself but it rhymes i was in berlin in march there's a museum called the topography of terrors dedicated to telling the story of the rise of the nazi party when i was there i did not imagine that i would face this coming back to america i don't want to hear a word right now about love equity and belonging the thoughts and prayers will do nothing to stop acts of physical written and verbal violence in our schools and continued protestations of this is not who we are ring empty and false these expressions of hate and power are our joint lived experience i am hopeful that with dr thomas's arrival we can come together and move beyond words and a vision that makes

092us feel good we need our district to take immediate action that will align with our professed ideals and moreover hold each other accountable for achieving actual results thank you thank you i would like to invite our next speaker brian coffee to the table welcome thank you for being here thank you for having me into this body for affording the public the chance to comment it's my first time exercising exercising that privilege it and i decided about 15 minutes ago i think that i was gonna come say something so apologies in advance if i meander i think this is like my main nightmare that i have i came to talk about math curriculum because i think that two reasons one i think it's it's genuinely you know curriculum is one of the most you know important

093things that this school does you know when the kids leave this district they leave with what they have learned and central to that is literacy and numeracy right and that's what lets them stand on their own two feet right and provide for themselves and and kind of have a chance in life so i'm really sensitive to anything that feels like you know we're not doing everything we can to maximize that opportunity when we hand them off to the world and invite them to sink or swim or tread or whatever's going to happen um you know so i'm not coming to you as a as a um you know curriculum expert um nor do i think you would view me as one if even if i said that i was um i've tried to learn you

094know a crash course kind of in different curricula and actually it's really interesting this sort of spectrum between inquiry based and sort of different names are used but basically memorize things and i can certainly see the appeal of you know moving to a system where we say oh um you know rather than just regurgitating information we're going to make connections we're going to let people explore and find their own way right i mean i'm for that i think who wouldn't be um but at the same time you know i think back to my own learning journey too um and realize that oftentimes those connections were only possible when you your foundation was rock solid right and doing that work and you see this pattern so many other places um if you go to medical school

095you spend a couple years cramming anatomy and molecules and drugs uh to even have access to be able to make the connections to help you help someone get healthier you're at one minute um that's kind of my skepticism about moving to something that's more inquiry-ish um in addition to the fact that it seems like the data is you know at best mixed um you know personally my kids i have a third grader kindergartener and rising preschooler who will be in the first chinese pre-k class um and i've sort of what got me off the sidelines uh as like uh someone who kept track of what's going on in the district was you know kind of the elementary school moving moving away from singapore math which has been thunderously successful i mean i think a year

096or two ago xin xing was like third in the state on mcas it worked so well and then to move away from that feels like fixing something that wasn't broke so i think this rises to like the top five percent of decisions that the board makes and i think my um opinion would be that it should come off the consent agenda and be discussed a little bit more in the light of day i know there's things that are talked about but i don't think those forums have amounted to um in my opinion a real chance for the public to understand or track what's going on thank you thank you appreciate it thank you and that concludes our public comment um and we will move on to our student board representatives report thank you all for

097being here this evening okay hello everyone um my name is claire fisher and i'm a senior student board representative um i will not be giving a traditional report this evening as this is my last school board meeting ever which is so crazy um i wanted to take a few moments to share some final thoughts um with just about a week left until graduation i have been reflecting a lot upon my time here at hopkins most of all i've been thinking about what an absolute privilege it has been to serve on this this school board i'm so honored to have had a seat at this table and have had a opportunity to not only represent and advocate for my senior class of approximately 500 but also for the more than 7 000 amazing students across the

098hopkins public schools district it has been incredibly rewarding to serve as a leader who can ensure my peers voices are genuinely heard and valued through this role i have learned what it truly means to be an effective and passionate leader i've come to understand the complexities behind our school policies and most importantly i've seen firsthand the immense dedication it takes to run a district like ours it is because of this experience that i now realize how special the hopkins community truly is thanks to the community people sitting in this room and every single person working behind the scenes i'm especially proud of my graduating class over two years as a student representative i have watched them work incredibly hard through our collective commitment to academic success service the to the community and persistent efforts towards

099towards social justice i believe the class of 2026 has done an exceptional job of showing up for one another and for our community i want to wish the rest of my fellow student board representatives the best of luck for next school year and the years to come i look forward to seeing how your passion for student advocacy continues to manifest in the future for me i will be attending scripps college in the fall where i hope to pursue leadership opportunities that will be just as rewarding and impactful as this one has been to the school board and the entire hopkins community thank you for listening to us for guiding us and believe believing in the power of student voices i will carry the lessons i learned at this table with me for a very long

100time thank you so much thank you claire and our deepest gratitude to you and all the work and care that you put into being in this program thank you very much yes absolutely hi everyone i'm adina and i'm one of the freshman representatives i wanted to start with my teacher spotlight which i'm going to be spotlighting my royals connect teacher mr therrell he's an amazing royals connect teacher throughout this whole year he's been super nice kind respectful and understanding mr therrell always has games out for us to play and is overall an amazing teacher next i wanted to talk about the festival of nations event that took place on thursday june 8th this was a project for the ninth grade ap european and world history classes got into groups and chose a country with that

101country they created an interactive informational stand that represented the traditions and culture of that country some students brought food games and even interacted in activity lastly i wanted to talk about the end of the year that's coming up tomorrow is the last day of school for seniors and june 10th is the last official day of school for 9th through 11th 9th through 11th graders on the 9th is senior graduation and the 10th is 9th through 11th commencement ceremony so that's really sad and exciting at the same time i just want to say thank you guys so much for an amazing year it's been an amazing experience and i cannot wait for the next couple of years with you guys hi my name is hausa i'm a freshman and i wanted to start off by talking

102about locker cleanouts the high school expects student lockers to be cleaned out and have the original lock on them if you have it in place by friday the fifth if anything is found inside the locker after friday it'll be donated or thrown away the second thing i wanted to talk about is school property returns students are expected to return library or textbooks hotspots calculators and anything that belongs to the school back to the media center unless you're not returning after spring break you're also expected to return chromebooks to the media center to avoid getting fined with graduating seniors not being able to pick up their cap and gown if fines have not been paid yet and finally i would like to spotlight miss hansen my intermediate algebra teacher because throughout the class i always find

103her even taking small groups of students to go out step by step through homework or worksheets or helping students one-on-one inside the classroom i also find it myself really helpful how she explains and goes through not only the math equations themselves but the questions too helping me understand and explain what the questions really mean and what they're asking and thank you so much this year i'm really excited to be back next school year i feel like this opportunity has really helped me um expand not only my vocabulary making all these scripts for myself but also my public speaking skills i know no one can hear my heartbeat right now but it's it's banging it's been banging all year thank you hi i'm iris i'm a sophomore and this is my second year on student board

104i wanted to start out by talking a little bit about spring sports as the school year wraps up so do spring sports so right now golf tennis track synchronized swimming baseball lacrosse and ultimate frisbee and a few others are all sports that are either directly part of the minnesota state high school league with the high school or somehow sponsored by the school and those either have finished or are starting to wrap up now with sections and state meets and then i also wanted to talk about a couple different summer opportunities for our students so the first one is MITY which stands for minnesota institute for talented youth this is a summer program that encompasses grades first through 12th but there's specifically a high school program for rising nine through 12th graders this is a great

105experience for students it gives them kind of insight at the college experience it takes place at mccallister college in st paul and it's all really small classes where students can take one class per session and they learn a lot about whatever it is that they're choosing to look into so they usually look into stem humanities or fine arts from a really master teacher courses are hands-on inquiry based and go beyond traditional curriculum and there's recreational activities that facilitate lifelong friendships with students from around the globe as well as across the twin cities you can choose to stay at the college or commute for a cheaper price and financial financial aid is available to those who need it next i wanted to talk about the regular summer school program at the high school is june 22nd

106through july 16th four days a week at the high school for students who need to make up credits that they miss during the school year and there will be busing provided and then also offered at the high school but separate from the regular summer school is freedom school which is a really interesting program that allows scholars and families to learn through the frames of different cultures it was created during the civil rights movement in mississippi to offer african-american students a rich and meaningful educational experience that combated racist systems which forced them into intense discrimination specifically in relation to the workplace and voting rights as a program it empowers families to experience an education that uplifts them and keeps them immersed in their own culture our program here at hopkins is for rising fourth through ninth

107graders and at hopkins freedom school has impacted students by making them more engaged in community activities and their school work during the regular year as well as improving their reading abilities drastically also approximately 93 percent of parents whose children participated in past years said that they agreed with the statement my child believes he or she can make a difference and the same amount of parents felt like they had a better understanding of how to help their child be successful because of the program so it's a really interesting program and i implore families to look into it if they're interested finally i wanted to spotlight miss tingey she's my long-term sub in biology my original biology teacher had to go on leave and miss tingey took his place and has proven to be an incredible teacher

108long-term subs don't necessarily have the best track record track record for maintaining course rigorous structure but miss tingey has done a great job of not only taking over when mr harris had to leave but she's also taught the class in a really engaging and meaningful way i feel like i've learned a lot and i found myself actually interested in the work as well even though it's science is not usually all that fascinating to me but miss tingey makes it really exciting i also feel like i have the best understanding of the curriculum of any science class i've taken before her teaching style is very intuitive and helpful so it's really easy to follow along and really learn and be engaged in her class we just finished our evolution unit with the final project allowing us

109not only to show our learning but to do in a creative way i wrote a children's book about the evolution of the red fox and i know other students made comic strips or wrote documentary scripts about other minnesota animals so that was a really fun project finally i just wanted to thank everyone for allowing me to be on the student board again it was such an incredible experience last year and again this year and i can't wait to do it again next year thank you all hi my name is minnow wahyu i'm a junior student board rep and this is my third year as a student board rep so i'm going to start out with my staff spotlight which will be for our college and career readiness coordinator dr cool who's actually in the audience

110right now but dr cool has been an amazing resource for all students to plan their lives after graduation and speaking as a june as a current junior she has been vital in looking at what comes next and whether students want to apply to a four-year university trade schools or go straight into the workforce dr cool meets you exactly where you are and what makes dr cool so special is about how personalized her approaches she sits down with you and listens to your goals to help you map out a realistic plan to achieve them and she also organizes our school's college fairs career fairs college prep classes and so much more and she also leads in making important changes to our school such as weighted grades and increasing act prep ensuring that every single student is

111supported in their journey as the junior class prepares to step into our final year of high school and college applications having dr cool makes the future feel more exciting rather than scary so thank you dr cool for your dedication patience and helping us pave the way to our futures now starting my report so for graduation the senior party and senior walk will be held on tuesday june 9th during the school day at hopkins high school the senior party will be held at the rack with many fun activities for the seniors to enjoy and the senior walk is where seniors return to their former elementary schools and walk through them commencement will be held at june 10th at noon and in the roy wilkins auditorium in st paul and the commencement speakers will be students anna

112jaeger and riley middleton and the mc will be ezra wolf next as a student board we would like to acknowledge the incident that occurred yesterday june 4th june 1st regarding the phone call to the office that was interpreted to be a threat we were satisfied with how quickly administration reacted and created a plan for students and were also satisfied with how calm and collected students were able to be throughout the entire event we appreciated the abundance of caution that was taken and are very thankful that all students and staff are safe we hope that this event can inform future planning and safety precautions and if any students feel deeply affected by the events that occurred yesterday we recommend to reach out to our school counselors as they are always amazing people to talk to since

113it's the last board meeting i would like to thank the school board for your service and dedication to our district over the past few years it takes an immense amount of time commitment and energy to govern a school district and i'm excited to work with you all for a final year next year however i would like to speak about one issue that i believe should be of utmost importance in our collective work next year which is weighted grades first it would be remiss of me if i didn't start by expressing disappointment in the hopkins school board after over two and a half years of service to the board as a student representative and over a year of collaboration with our college and career readiness coordinator dr cool hearing that the decision on weighted grades has

114been pushed to next fall is a tough pill to swallow but one that i understand i understand the need for more deliberation but this timeline means that the class of 2027 will not benefit from these changes for the rising seniors the window has officially closed and we will graduate under the current system regardless of the decision and to my peers the class of 2027 i'm sorry i know and experience daily how hard we work in apn honors rooms and i know the stress of looking at college admissions and scholarship data wishing our district's policies leveled the playing field more for us i know the immense stress of thinking about how on earth we are going to pay for college i would like you to know that i gave this my best shot for this year

115and while the timing did not work out for us your efforts in those classrooms still define your work ethic and character what makes this delay difficult to process is that the momentum for this policy seemingly vanished without clear feedback communication or a new sense of direction which has been confusing even to the students and staff who have invested countless hours into this proposal however while i'm disappointed i'm not deterred but for a decision to be reached this fall we need to move past the current lack of clear direction a delay without a roadmap is simply a stall and the student body and community deserves to know what specific benchmarks must be met for this to pass or to not pass to ensure we aren't chasing a moving target i'm asking the board for clear requirements

116what specific data equity concerns or logistical questions were left unanswered that caused the indecision i'm willing to put in the work to get the board to a point where you all feel ready to make an informed decision this fall but we can only succeed if the board defines exactly where that finish line is and before i end i want to say a sincere thank you to my peers to the students who took the time to speak with me in class or the hallways those who shared their personal opinions insights and academic stories and the hundreds of you who provided honest feedback through our surveys thank you your voices are the reason that this has been and will continue to be a priority and i'm proud to represent a student body that is so deeply engaged

117in the future of our school's academic experience i would also like to thank all of the school board members as i know that you all spent much of your time thinking about and working on this issue as well and i hope we can continue carrying that on into next year even though the class of 2027 won't see the benefit on paper we are proud to be the class that did the heavy lifting in leading the discussions this year we are building the foundation so that students behind us our younger siblings and friends can have their academic rigor fairly recognized our goal now is to ensure that when the board meets this fall the board can feel confident in reaching a final equitable decision based in the reality of the current landscape of higher education we

118are playing the long game for the benefit of this school's future thank you thank you thank you manuel any feedback or topics from my board colleagues before i jump in i wanted to thank you for that manuel and then also invite with vice chair roper's approval for there to be a working group over the summer with the board if you would like to be on that i think that would be very appropriate on the topic of weighted grades of course yes absolutely all right we're all in and we'll send out some invites to get those started and i want to join you in your admiration and gratitude toward dr cool you you are not the only student that has felt that i as a parent have felt your your care your individual focus on each

119student and there are so many of them i don't know how you do it but you do it so thank you for all of that work it is felt by not only the students but also their parents and claire i am thrilled that you will be moving on and also will be sad not to see you here and to have your distinctive voice at the table with us and i want to invite all of the student board reps to a party that we're going to have at our june 23rd meeting at 6 30 to honor all of you but in particular our senior board reps so think about coming back i know you probably won't be able to join but we will we will have that and i iris i am always impressed with your

120student board rep report and the way that you highlight what's going on in the district and the courage of using your voice and in particular i just wanted to say when you first started on um sorry hamda hafsa when you first started at the board table we could barely hear you and now this meeting your voice is so strong and you have really come into your own and so what you said about public speaking spot on we've seen that growth so thank you for being here and lending your voice and adina i'm thrilled you have also shown yourself to be a remarkable student board rep i always say we have the best students in hopkins and you are representations of the best of the best so thank you all for your service i know it's

121not easy you are so busy and you have so much going on but you show up and you share with us what's important to you and we take that to heart and we are better because you're here and helping us so thank you all thank you very much thank you can i say something yes um i will just i'm gonna just keep it short but thank you all i share the same sentiments as chair and dreeson um about your dedication and your work on the uh hopkins school board um i really appreciate listening to all of your board reports and just keeping us updated on what's happening over at the high school sometimes it's really hard to get to everything because there's so much happening but i appreciate uh the updates from you uh many

122well thank you so much for your honesty and um you know your feedback on that way to great process that was really difficult for us um and just to know that we consider your hard work in every single meeting like your name came up and um so we um i'm more than happy uh like chair and recent said to get that work group started so we can reconsider what way the grades look like um in the district and then claire i hope i get to shake your hand i hope you come down my way at the graduation so i can give you a handshake no at the graduation okay oh yeah of course of course yes absolutely um thank you for your service on the board and i pray that you know what your um

123after high school um adventures are brings you much success and so and thank you all i look forward to seeing you and iris and everyone else so thank you so much you're welcome thank you and that takes us to the superintendent's report dr mary perry reed thank you chair and recent all right well may is a time of culmination and celebration and um it does feel very misguided to speak to the many celebrations happening across our system without acknowledging the abhorrent behavior being demonstrated by a small number of individuals so i do just want to take a moment to say that not only do we denounce the nine instances of antisemitic and bias related images and words that were scrawled on our classroom and bathroom walls at our mostly at our high school and one

124instance at north middle school we also reject the racist images and phrases that were posted on social media and we repudiate the anonymous caller who threatened our high school yesterday and disrupted a very important learning day and it is very important for our community to know that there are many actions being taken and having been taken to root out these individuals and to hold our students and our staff our staff and self accountable there are school and district leaders who are working together to supervise and monitor a very massive physical space at our high school there are many individuals investigating all evidence that has been reported or found including hours and hours of reviewing camera footage there are many individuals partnering with law enforcement interviewing students interviewing families and using what's within our policy and

125regulations to apply consequences for students who have been found we have not yet found the individual or individuals who have been producing those horrific and antisemitic bias related scrolls on our property at the high school and we will continue doing everything within our resources to take actions that that do improve the safety and security and especially psychological safety for our students while holding those accountable who are intending to cause harm and dehumanize students who are being targeted in with these actions so i do think it's just so important to speak to what is being done right now and i don't want anyone to think that that folks are sitting around not doing anything there's a lot of people working really really really hard yesterday was was an important learning day for those of us who

126work together administering our emergency response protocols we did have an anonymous caller call the high school and and issue a very serious threat we worked with law enforcement we worked with our safety coaches we worked with our educators who were incredible in providing a calm environment for our students we did work with law enforcement to make a decision to release students early which required us to call buses to the high school earlier than normal and that required coordination with north middle school and with tanglin elementary so i i apologize that it was an event that may have caused anxiety or stress for our students when i was standing at the doors holding them open for students who were exiting the property i kept repeating everything's okay have a good afternoon everything's okay have a good

127afternoon is very stressful for students and afternoon is very stressful for students and for staff and there's a lot of people who are working together not only to coordinate a calm response for yesterday but also to figure out who is causing harm to our community and so i would like to thank the speaker for providing his perspective but also inspire confidence in our community that we are working together to monitor and root out this individual or these individuals and thank you for thank you for leaning into what we can all do together because obviously we need our we need help from our parents and community members educating our students and holding our students accountable and helping them engage in positive and productive behaviors is collective work right that that phrase that it takes a village

128it is collective work and so we all need to work together and if you see something you say something and this this pattern of behavior truly it shouldn't have happened once and it needs to stop so with that we also have a lot of really fantastic things happening in our community there's only six school days left and things are fast and furious it's a very busy time and all the way from early childhood to grade 12 and t plus in fact i think our we have a couple of graduations this week and so it's a very exciting time um we can go to the next slide so i wanted to share that we recently had an avid celebration we had this year 59 seniors in avid which is advancement via individual determination jen heimlich is

129the instructor for that course and she shared at the celebration that 85 percent of our avid seniors completed at least one advanced placement course we had more avid seniors be admitted to saint thomas and the u of m than ever before which is really fantastic a hundred percent of our avid seniors received merit-based scholarships either directly from their colleges or from outside entities and so we're really proud of our 59 avid seniors thanks to our two multicultural liaisons ayan bundid and brondo rojas acevedo they hosted a multicultural celebration for students and families last week these were our many of our somali and latino latina families who were in attendance there was wonderful meal provided by two staff members who are brothers so jp frederick is our assistant athletic director and then his brother isaiah frederick

130is a safety coach at north and they also own a culinary catering business so they prepared the food and you can see in the photo there was a stanley brown sighting he previously served as our coordinator of equity and inclusion and it was a wonderful time for those families i wanted to also highlight the end of year band concerts of course we have end of year concerts for choir for orchestra i happened to attend band last week which is really spectacular senior musicians were spotlighted with many of them performing solos there was a slideshow where we got to see each senior from super cute baby to sophisticated high school senior and i would like to acknowledge norah tykast and really the masterful way that she cultivates students into wonderful musicians also glenn lake recently hosted

131an inaugural community day a student-led celebration of inclusion friendship and belonging so this day was designed and facilitated by fifth grade students who participate in unified pe and the event featured olympic themed experiences with opening ceremony adapted activity stations and a closing medal celebrations it was a really fun event on a beautiful morning at glenn lake also reflecting our commitment to ensuring that every student feels valued and included in school activities we would like to offer on behalf of hopkins public schools a royal congratulations to hopkins preschool teachers so in this photo you see emily anna rob kelly and erica who recently graduated from st cait's earning their tier four licensure which is the highest level of teacher licensure available in minnesota all five graduated summa cum laude or magna cum laude which is amazing

132and three were among the 11 valedictorians in their class and as you know preschool teachers truly create a strong foundation of learning for our students and so please send these five a congratulations and thank them for the difference they make in our littlest learners and then finally before our spotlight i wanted to continue sharing the incredible work that laura hetzel is doing with our teams across the system hopkins was recently awarded a two-year mtss or multi-tiered systems of supports grant from mde the grant will help strengthen and align our district's academic behavioral and social emotional support systems we'll be building better consistency across our schools and establishing shared expectations for student support this uh the both the writing of the grant and this mtss work will be led by dr ann urdle she's our director

133of innovation design and learning and dr camphy our assistant director and the idle team idl team in partnership with our instructional leadership teams across our schools so we're really excited about the financial support to do that work and then we're going to quickly andrew we're going to invite andrea shack who should be online here to present a spotlight on nutrition services andrea can you hear us i can can you guys hear me we had to put get a new link so yes we can hear you and thank you for being here and spotlighting nutrition services yes thank you for having me virtually um i want to start out first with uh you know right now this year we're celebrating 80 years as uh the anniversary of the national school lunch act and i don't know

134if anybody knows why this national act was uh put together back in 1946 can anyone answer that for me what was the question question is why did we come up with the national school lunch act so kids don't be hungry well that's true uh but back in world war we were seeing men coming into being enlisted that were very malnutritioned so that's kind of what started it that we wanted to make sure that our students and young people at that time were actually more well fed and they'd be seeing healthier healthier kids going into the services so that was the main reason well this year so far hopkins student nutrition have served 961,000 meals i think we are probably going to hit a million after we get through what we've done for may and for

135june which is amazing we also have 63 percent of our food and body eating lunch every day we have 38 eating breakfast and that's amazing before we had the free breakfast meals i think we were more in the 20s so that's how much more serving free breakfast that have had students come and eat with us and breakfast as we know is so important so i think we should be very proud of that statistic we currently have 64 staff as student nutrition employees and we also serve 11 sites we also provide catering and concessions for the district one thing we're pretty proud of this year is we had a very successful negotiation uh with our contract for our staff and we had a lot of people that took a lot of time and hours and five

136of my own students that were on the committee to make sure that the voices were heard of student nutrition employees and so i'm really proud to say they got a really good contract that they very much was excited to get and was happy that it went well we secured 65,000 in full trade grants this year that we use for local vendors that we you know local farmers and different produce and products that we buy from so that's excellent we work with over six different farmers to secure some local foods some of the things that we get is bayfield apples we also get cheese from cannonball cannon bells i should say dairy and cannon falls we also get turkey products from ferngale we also get a lot of local produce from bix actually they work a

137lot of local farmers and we also work with whole grain milling where we get our oats and our corn meal from so that's just a little example of how many different farmers and vendors that we use in our program we celebrate with our staff on 8 30th lunch hero day we have a little program for them in the afternoons refreshments wrote it came by and talked with staff we had about 35 staff come and i think they really enjoyed themselves this year we have three summer feeding sites that we will be at for receiving free meals this summer we'll be at high school eisenhower and england and we will be supporting seven different programs new items on our menu this year we tried tamales which i think the students really enjoyed we put on good

138old minnesota tater ta hot dish and we got mixed reviews which is too bad one of my favorite but um it's really liked it some dents we did some latchos and we also had a spring intern that we usually try to do a fall in a spring intern from the u of m and she put together eggs egg bites because we're always trying to look for new breakfast foods and she went ahead and had taste testing with the students and it was a hit and we actually have that on our menu now speaking of trying to you know be good looking at our budget and being physically responsible we're one of the ways we're going to try with fun too to increase revenue this year is adding a la carte sales to both our middle

139schools we also are going to want to add new items to our high school quick selection and we're making all of our all of our areas more of a priority it's always easy to pull people from that area when we're short and actually it's a really good revenue maker for us we're trying to make that more of a priority we're also being very mindful of labor costs as well as as know the very high food costs that we're dealing with food costs have been up over five percent so when we're looking at preparing our menus for the year we really try to be careful about like what kind of menus were meals that we are putting on are they high participation meals and just making sure that that we are being as efficient as we

140can we also have about 344,000 commodity entitlements that we get every year and we're we're pretty proud of ourselves that we use up every dime of that tanya is one of my assistant supervisors and she will get it down to almost like 10 cents so we use every dime of our commodity entitlement and sometimes we will have a little extra money that comes in in the fall and spring from mde and we always make sure we use that as well next year hopkins will be again providing elementary schools are alice smith and gatewood with the popular fresh fruit and veggie program which is a usda program and what's really cool about that is we get to use so many different fruits and vegetables that maybe we wouldn't normally be able to buy because it can

141be expensive we get about 50 to 75 dollars per student to do this and this past year we had 45 different varieties of items that students were able to sample we had lemon plums for example purple ninja radishes kissable apples and something called candy cane beast so i think that it's really fun to actually put that program together and find all these different fruits and vegetables that we would normally even i haven't like even tried some of them so it's it's been fun and of course with high food prices you know we are continuing to be dedicated to our mission of providing as much scratch cooking in our menus and in our kitchens as possible i couldn't do this work i have to have a huge shout out without my nutrition staff i don't believe

142everyone knows how highly skilled our our professionals are without them we couldn't have the program we have they are very dedicated they love feeding hopkins students you can tell that each day and i believe my last slide shows us last year after we had our workshop our back-to-school workshop for the day they're just awesome individuals and i'm very lucky to work with them every day thank you so much i have to say as someone who gets to participate in school lunch and the meals and the programs it's an amazing offering i am always impressed with what's offered to our children in the schools and thank you for all the work you do and impressive appreciate that and i will definitely make sure my staff know that as well thank you and i have to concur

143on the tater tot hot dish i love it but a lot of the kids are like no and i'm like not even the tater tots i know and they're really supposed to try it at least three times before you want to take it off the menu but we're still trying with that yes i like the tater tot hot dish yeah i liked it that's good yes i agree thank you thank you andrea for preparing this report please thank your staff i will absolutely thank you roda for everything you've done supporting us in all the years with us i appreciate it thank you andrea thank you and before we conclude open agenda i would like to make a statement the this board is committed to ensuring that every student in our district feels safe respected and

144valued recently our community has been impacted by a pattern of hate and bias related behaviors that are unacceptable and defy the values we work hard to uphold these incidents include a racist social media posts posts directed at black students and several instances of anti-semitic graffiti primarily at the high school we want to be clear these behaviors do not represent who we are as a district i want to express again my gratitude to the parents and community members who made public comment calling our attention to and denouncing these harmful behaviors at our last meeting i have taken to heart your calls to action and regret that your families are living through this experience you have my assurance that our levers of power will be applied to this issue as we strive to bring our entire district

145into alignment with our values in addition to focused administrative interventions in partnership with local enforcement agencies our policy and monitoring committee is actively engaged in systemic work to ensure our actions match our values this includes review of racial equity harassment and bullying policies we are currently reviewing policies 413 and 514 with legal counsel to ensure our responses are aligned with strong anti-racist practices our policy 554 and provide clear accountability further development of protected class policies in addition to strengthening education around anti-semitism we are working with legal counsel to adapt a community harm framework similar to that used by eastern carver our osseo and other districts to respond more consistently to incidents involving bias racism and other forms of identity-based harm we are also reviving conversations around crafting an anti-semitism policy unique to hopkins proactive structures

146we have begun discussing the relaunch of our equity and inclusion advisory structure to include both students and caregivers to help the district be more proactive in preventing and responding to community harm while no single action can fully undo the harm experienced by our students and families we are acting with urgency to improve our systems we remain dedicated to a process of continuous improvement to ensure our schools are places of belonging for everyone and with that i would ask for a motion to approve tonight's agenda so moved i have a motion is there a second second i have a motion and a second any discussion seeing none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the chair votes aye and tonight's agenda is approved and that takes us to our consent calendar these items

147provide the board with information considered to be more routine in nature and i would like to say that we have a couple of well at least one edit to the consent calendar that you see before you we need to remove for consideration item j solar for schools grant approval resolution that is not complete and needs to be removed before board approval can happen so when we are discussing this and approving this it will be without item j just are there any questions from any members of the board and then also we have been having lots of discussion um about a workshop topic on approval of the imagine im grade six through eight math materials discussion so wanted to highlight that for our community members going into this process i believe there might be a few

148comments from board members about the discussions we've been having um so with that i would look for a motion to that the board approve the consent calendar without item j so moved i have a motion is there a second second i have a motion and a second and now we will open it up for discussion chair andreson yes thank you before we vote on the consent agenda i want to briefly note some reservations i have regarding the middle school math curriculum adoption over the past couple of weeks i spent considerable time reviewing this recommendation i submitted a lengthy list of questions to our innovation design and learning team and we all as board members received thoughtful and thorough responses and i truly do appreciate the time and effort that went into answering each and every

149question i also want to be clear that i'm not a curriculum expert we employ talented educators instructional leaders and subject matter experts and i respect the work they've put into this recommendation as a board member i do not believe it is our role to dictate exactly how teachers teach in classrooms however it is our responsibility to ensure major decisions are supported by evidence informed by stakeholder input and consistent with our commitments around transparency and accountability earlier tonight dr urtl reminded us that we need reliable measurements of student growth and that we should use data to inform our decisions i agree completely that is why i continue to struggle with both the process and the timing of this recommendation the district has acknowledged that the review process for grades six through eight looked different than the

150process used for k through five adoption i've also heard from numerous parents community members and teachers who have asked for a broader public discussion before making a long-term commitment a commitment that will go until 2033 i was also struck by a point raised during public comment tonight curriculum decisions are among the most important decisions a school board makes and i think there is value in allowing the community to see not only the decision we make but also the discussion that leads to it most importantly we were told tonight that the district is still collecting implementation data reviewing fast bridge results conducting focus groups and gathering feedback regarding the k through five implementation of imagine im math we're still evaluating the first phase of this work so i have a hard time understanding why we are

151already making a seven-year commitment to the next phase through 2033 i also think it's worth acknowledging that we are in the midst of a superintendent transition we have a new superintendent arriving shortly yet tonight we are considering a commitment that extends through 2033 before dr thomas has had a meaningful opportunity to review the data and weigh in importantly i do not view this recommendation as a dramatic departure from what we are already doing in middle school mathematics because of that i do not believe the adoption is likely to cause harm my concern is different i'm not yet convinced it will make a meaningful difference when student outcomes remain a concern when we are still gathering data from the elementary implementation and when we are making a significant commitment through 2033 i believe it is reasonable

152to ask whether we should have a more robust public discussion before moving forward i appreciate the work that has gone into this recommendation and simply one of these concerns reflected in the public record if any of my colleagues believe these concerns warrant further discussion i would welcome hearing their perspectives thank you thank you any other discussion chair and reason yes director thompson i mean can i move that we pull i and talk about it separately it just seems like it warrants more of a discussion here um so i i would like to move to pull i item i i think that we were hoping that the discussion would be happening right now which is is we're offering a forum for that right now okay and understood i just think it gets messy if we're voting

153on items and like i have trouble with one but the rest of them i don't um i just think it might be cleaner if if we're able to talk about them separate so is the purpose that you want further discussion is that why it's being pulled yeah i i had just a couple quick questions about it okay um so there we are pulling item i to um be an item first item of new business um with that i would look for a motion to approve the consent calendar less items i and j so moved i have a motion is there a second second i have a motion and a second any discussion chair anderson yes i have two quick comments one is um we are approving a q comp report and i just wanted to

154briefly say both for the board and for the community that that is an important funding stream for our school it it gives participating schools additional funding that supports teacher professional development and coaching and career advancement with the goal of improving student learning and it is a program that's really frequently on the chopping block of the minnesota state legislature but so far has escaped significant cuts um and i was struck by this report's you know strong correlation between peer coaches for the classroom teachers and seeing student learning outcomes that are measured in a variety of ways but i was mildly disappointed that we were given this graph that has an x-axis of the the feedback of the people who were coached and we can't read the questions so strongly agree to all of them it looks

155like a fantastic result but we can't actually read so we need a better so it'd be lovely to see those but the report is a good one and worth everyone's read so i'd have that one single question if um i don't know to whom i'm exactly asking that question right now but probably idl thank you thank you um and then there's an enabling resolution on here and i wanted to call attention to that though school is not in session it is actually one of our busiest buying times as we replenish school supplies and clean and train teachers and renovate buildings and actually still provide education services for thousands of students over the summer and this enabling resolution allows spending during this time when we do not meet however all of those purchases get reviewed in

156the fall and so prepare for a lengthy treasurer's report in august or september but that's all i wanted to say about that thank you great thank you any further discussion seeing none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the chair votes aye and the calendar the consent calendar is approved and that takes us to our treasurer's report treasurer heartland wonderful good evening i should pull up the correct document all right the board audit committee met on wednesday may 27th and received kind of the first glimpse of the fiscal year 25 audit and so the committee had a chance to hear about the process and the progress and i'm not going into details yet because that's coming up on our next board meeting but i am happy to announce that we'll be issued

157a clean report and we're doing really well on our timeline to have it totally wrapped as promised by the end of june and so then after that we will be officially caught up and ready for a timely beginning to our fiscal year 26 audit and this really represents a huge investment by the district by this team by admin by and especially by our business services department and partners who've worked really hard who have tackled tough problems they've been adaptable they've made changes they have learned and they have done a huge amount of work in a really short amount of time and i am grateful to them for that and then over the summer now that that heavy lift of the audit catch-up is just about done i'll be working with our controller and business services

158to bring a few changes to the treasurer's report moving forward we may be adding some elements to the report such as like electronic fund transfers fund balances and kind of a more i guess we do actually do gifts to the district again now but that will potentially be rolled into the treasurer's report so look for those as we start in the fall and then if any of you board members want to talk about that over the summer you can contact me some expenses of note are as follows we paid $81.55 to bio corporation for frogs dissection pans and t-pins for seventh graders to dissect their frogs in the science class and i did that with miss bode's class last year i volunteered and a very memorable quote that has stuck with me since then is

159i have never seen such good stomach contents that is not i don't know both my favorite and like the least favorite thing i've ever heard in school we paid blake school a non-public school and our boundaries eighteen thousand eight hundred fifty one dollars and thirty one cents for various required reimbursements the city of hopkins was paid for water and sewer utilities at our various sites in the city of hopkins we paid them seven thousand nine hundred ninety five dollars and two cents we paid feel the water incorporated 352772 for lifeguard training and curriculum and that was paid out of fund number 19 which is our local grants fund it is a local organization that provides a variety of water safety services including adaptive swimming lessons for humans with a whole variety of disabilities and so

160they're running a pretty cool program over this summer to train lifeguards and to pay to pay young or to pay older teenagers to become lifeguards we paid five hundred sixty five thousand seven hundred fifty seven dollars and fifty five cents to lake country industries one of our busing partners and mtn is the other we paid them four hundred ninety three thousand four hundred six dollars and fifty cents for services they rendered to us in march there are multiple invoices on this check register all of them in the hundreds of dollars to a few book vendors and their invoice descriptions say sla books and that means school library a something possibly account school library count i actually don't know what the a stands for but those are books that are listed for the site library to

161either replace or replenish the stacks in each of those schools we paid skyward fifty four thousand four hundred thirty nine dollars for our annual licensing fee that's our business department's erp superior vision services which paid five thousand six hundred eight dollars for our employees vision plan five thousand five hundred ninety nine dollars and 37 cents was paid to weaving cultures for interpretation services provided across the district from the end of march towards the beginning of april and with that i move that we approve total disbursements in the amount of two million three hundred seventy four thousand five hundred twenty two dollars and eighty seven cents for the period of april 16th to april 30th 2026 i have a motion is there a second second i have a motion and a second any discussion chair and

162director chompson thank you um thanks for the report treasurer harlan i just one thing that caught my eye that i was curious about do you know this pre-bill for march 2026 to intermediate district 287 it just looked abnormal to me so i was just curious if noted that as well at all um let's see often i report on our district 287 this one i did not specifically call out i'm trying to flip my report to that apologies one moment the alphabet is difficult it's under i on page five i think and yeah i'm just curious if like march was something was happening different or i do not know why i like literally cannot follow the alphabet on my own page right now i must be out of order yeah pre-bill for march there's a number

163of them 25k 38k and some smaller amounts so i what i do know and have said in a report really recently is that there are a variety of bills that we pay to 287 so on may 5th we talked about we actually paid on that check register there were 683 000 worth of invoices that go to 287 and we are on a whole variety of billing cycles with them they provide a bunch of services including like they bill substitutes to us they build like special instances that arrive to us so we get monthly bills we get quarterly we get like semi-annual mid-year type bills then final bills plus all of these incidentals such as pre-bills so yeah it it's all good don't worry about it i i just was it just looked different than i'm

164normally seeing so okay hey look i finally figured out how to turn to page five are you asking the superintendent which might take her a minute to respond director contrarious do you know what the pre-bill invoices are for right thank you and in the future if these questions can come before a meeting it allows us to dig deeper into what those are and what makes them up understood thank you thank you i don't need anything further on those things i'll let you know what i hear okay any further discussion seeing none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the chair votes aye and the treasurer's report is approved thank you very much treasurer heartland i always appreciate your reports and so that takes us to our new first order of new business

165which is the imagine i am grade six through eight math materials purchase i would like to invite director urdle up to the table and anyone else who has expertise in particular from the middle school that was involved in the selection process if you could come to the table to answer questions from our board members perhaps respond in depth to director hyman's comments in the public record i think we all received written responses to those then i'd like a full reflection of the response thank you i don't know if you want to start there sure well i can i'll start actually with a little introduction um of these really um somewhat reluctant speakers they're math people we'll just leave it at that yeah um for sure so um this is maggie omali and she along with

166tracy beaverson you've seen here before they've been heavily engaged in supporting the implementation work at our k-5 and then also just by virtue of that have been involved and aware of the middle school process as well and then i would like to introduce janine salser she is a veteran math teacher at north and are you going to teach sixth grade next year okay so i'm hopefully she'll be veda chandramali's math teacher next year that's my daughter so um anyway so i just want to say a couple of things to begin first of all um director hyman we appreciated all of your questions and um i think important for our community to know that we certainly um believe in our process and we want to make sure that our community is aware and supportive of the

167process as well and so um i invite the conversation i invite having it removed from the consent and brought to new business i think any conversation um that you know leads to a broader sense of awareness is the right thing to do and mr coffee said this is an important decision it's a fiscally important decision um we don't want to spend money um willy nilly but also it's not just the materials because as i mentioned in one of the responses when you adopt materials that's like one piece of a puzzle but you're also like investing a lot of teacher time in learning the new materials implementing the new materials and all of the professional learning that goes along with it and so it goes even beyond the dollar amount um that is is part of

168the um request so um with that said i do oh one thing i think that is a point of clarification director hyman um regarding the duration of the contract so i consulted with um john wetter and alissa capil on my team who um frequently are the ones working through these contracts and the contractual length actually refers to the amount of time we would have access to the digital license for this material set so what i mentioned that just because it what it means is regardless of what we decide tonight it doesn't obligate us to continue to use it it just means that if we continue to use it past that date we would have to renegotiate for a digital access to the to the material set so just um wanted to clarify that work doesn't

169obligate us that said um this the investment for that time period is still something to consider yeah and i think that was outlined in the email that you sent the board that it was a cost-saving measure yeah i mean it's sort of what these publishers like to do is you know get you in and kind of lock you in and it's a benefit to us too i mean as an aside you know one of the things that our team is trying to learn more about are some um outcomes based contract measures with publishers which they don't love but really for school districts to have some negotiating power in that space is a really important thing but of course not all publishers offer that or support that so and then could you also speak to um

170i thought it was very interesting to hear about why this process was different than um what we went through with the k through five curriculum adoption and specifically i'm glad you have part of the team here that was part of that decision making process because i think they could speak to why that process um was different sure absolutely does anybody want to speak to that they're like no i can i mean i can start just by saying um gosh and well several years ago about five years ago we um were looking at our math results concerned about outcomes we convened a group a long time ago prior to even having a math specialist on the ideal team was led by becky allen and i and really one of the early outcomes of that was oh

171like we actually need a math specialist who can really not only facilitate this process but also shepherd us to um through a lot of achievement or excuse me improvement efforts given some of the um vertical and horizontal alignment and coherence things that we were seeing and so um so since then we have employed a district math specialist who has been helping with that process um i would say and then i'll i'll turn it over the um the degree of change is one thing that's different about um k-12 excuse me k-5 and 6-8 and what i mean is um the initial part of the program review process is a look at a program in its whole so it's a k-12 process by which we're saying you know this is what our vision is for math instruction

172in hopkins okay well what does that mean if we look at elementary math what does that look like what does it mean when we look at middle school math and and high school is in progress um and in the future as well so um as janine and i were just kind of thinking about the the degree of change around fidelity and coherence to a resource across an elementary school and the amount of pedagogical shift that that took it was a greater degree of change in our system than we experienced then then imagine iam would bring forth at the middle level so that's a little bit why the process looked different i don't know if you guys would want to add anything i think too it's just the scope we have six elementaries around 200 elementary

173teachers that wanted say wanted to look at it that we were thinking about and i in the two middle schools i think it's 10 maybe about 10 so even just the scope of the people involved there and then that change management versus changing with 200 teachers and changing with 10 around 10 and did i hear correctly too that um one i think uh teachers saw a need for a coherence that there were gaps with incoming um middle schoolers so having that coherence between the elementary and then middle school materials and curriculum and then also that there are middle school teachers math teachers that are already using this so that also informed the decision so there's been experience with teachers and so this curriculum was already kind of piloted we already had gone through part of

174the process already am i accurate in thinking that yes um i also think one of the factors would be just the the desire of the middle school teaching staff to um have the opportunity to teach a continuous and coherent curriculum i've had a long history in hopkins we've not ever done that um as we've jumped from curriculum from elementary to middle school and high school so it's very intriguing and um provides us with a lot of opportunity i think to look at what kids know and can do mathematically where gaps and holes are when we can see something that builds on itself all the way through from kindergarten through eighth grade interesting and it will be a consistent structure consistent routines consistent flow of a lesson so that that i think too the kids will

175know what math will be like it will be different but it will have a similar flow and feel to it and familiar familiarity i didn't say that right thank you chair and do you think i see a question or can i ask a question yes but i did want to get to um i almost said clerk director thompson's questions because he he wanted to put i just wanted to kind of frame um give an opportunity to response so director thompson you had specific questions yeah and um thank you so much and and dr i just appreciate it when you say that you welcome pulling it off because guess what we have this discussion in public people understand it it helps everybody so thank you um i just had kind of technical questions about the contract

176when it says like us you know student single use user license grade six you know we're going to buy 543 of these does does that single use that so that allows them to like use the online type of stuff right does that just last that year and then we have to pay again or or does that use agreement last all seven years throughout the thing it so it would be the duration of the contract yeah and then if after seven years we are continuing then renegotiation again and then i had seen here it's like you know hey if we get more than 543 sixth graders we'll just charge you for the additional ones so that makes sense okay thank you um so that helped me kind of understand the financial component of it um i

177think that was my main question at the moment here so i'll defer to vice chair rober okay thank you so much um thank you all for being like again at this board table and just um sharing your expertise on this i just have a quick question for you all then just for you director hyman so just for for my understanding my clarity so for elementary we have i am then we're going to be doing we're looking to do i am for uh the middle schools and then we're going to be doing i am in high school so we're keeping it so no i am in high school okay we're not there yet okay so high school again is going to be a little bit different because high school has some pretty significant standards additions to

178what is expected in nine through twelve and so they've got um before you can jump to the materials they've got some work to do in determining um their course sequences so are they going to introduce a new data course for example or are they going to take the existing courses and divide out the new data standards into existing courses so there they have some decisions around um that to make well before we start looking at materials to support the courses okay however do we need full implementation including the high school by 27 28 yes so we need to make a decision soon yeah so we anticipate that maybe um depending on the work of that team um to be in a similar kind of conversation this time next year potentially thank you so much then

179director hyman just quickly so um thank you for bringing up the um sharing your statement um through your research was there did you i know you say you're not a curriculum expert but did you receive feedback about a different curriculum from the community members who reached out to you that may be better for the district or like i'm just um maybe i'm trying to understand like what type of um research was done and like what was like involved in the research and like how did you come up to the point where like you thought were the community excuse me where like i am was like not degraded for the district thank you for the question i just want to clarify one thing that i think i am um maybe the right fit for the district

180my concern was on process and procedure and optics and policy and while we have very might as well come to the same conclusion i think there's there was concern from the community that this process looked different than the k through five and there was no public explanation as to why so my concerns not necessarily with i am it's that the process was different and i felt the need to have all of you thank you at the board table to explain why that process was different here and again and i think dr earle you can speak to this but changing to i am imagine math in six through eight is not a change in or the math teachers can speak to it probably better is not a change to um the the style of teaching or

181in an inquiry we're already doing inquiry based math is my understanding based on the curriculum we're currently using is that right no i would say it's more problem based there is inquiry in it but it is problem based where students are solving math in context and so i think sometimes even teachers think oh it's just inquiry but there is direct instruction and there is intentional move so it they they use the term problem based versus inquiry even though there are inquiry inquiry parts within it and so some of the research i did was based on the direct instruction understanding math facts as opposed to a fully in inquiry based style but my understanding is that there is direct instruction as part of um i am imagine and that we're not completely abandoning i mean you

182can speak to this we're not completely abandoning teaching math facts and providing direct instruction to students is that right there is direct instruction that's the teacher moves as students are working and there is focus on fluency and math and math facts are part of fluency but it's knowing the reason behind it and having strategies and being able to decompose a number and break it apart and understand numbers deeply it sort of reminds me of the um discussions we've had about like foundational literacy like you you can't really do phonics through inquiry um and so like there are certain things of course that just require fluency um and that and that those direct instruction components i know janeen do you want to say anything else about that well i think that um there are instructional changes

183for the teachers who will be picking up i am if that is the decision moving forward i just don't think that instructional lift is as great for the middle school teachers as perhaps it was for the elementary i can't speak for them however as i'm not in that system um because we have been teaching um inquiry based moving to a problem based isn't as big of a lift okay thank you yeah my question i mean thank you so much for answering my questions i just maybe i'm just um trying to understand like when we're talking about community feedback it feels as if you know like we're saying well like we're hearing teachers are saying this we're here teacher or community seeing this but like i feel like i'm not hearing that information that feedback and

184then like you're saying that you're getting that feedback so um just wondering like where you're getting your resources from like are people just reaching out to you with this because i'm not receiving that feedback i received maybe like two today but like before him before this i haven't like received like as much feedback it seems like that you're receiving so yeah that's good contacts yeah thank you that's i was just saying like because i would love to like respond to like the teachers and you know and community members as well so we can make sure that we're all like equally spreading out like the responses to our teachers and our community members in different communities yeah thank you chair andresa yes thank you just one more point kind of on the topic of community feedback

185and engagement dr urdle i've been riding with you with the educational services advisory committee for like two plus years it's been great the you know the thing that i would say is we need to lean into that yeah let's get the dates on the website yeah accurate they still reflect last school year okay so um let's do that and then you know i i talked to you after that third meeting where we talked about mass saying you know this was the best esac meeting that we've had in two plus years because we were able to give direct feedback you know through our devices and that was helpful because i felt like yes you know i was able to use my voice and say something there and so you know to lean into that type of

186way to facilitate esac you know be sure it's in the school newsletters that are going out each week people know about it i i think that would help the community to say like hey there is a forum here if i want to talk about it that's it you know come attend so i just think that would only help i really appreciate that you did give me that feedback you did not say anything about it in your board report but that's okay yeah it's it's funny because i was just thinking about this today um so a couple of things about esac um that i'm going to do differently next year one thing is because we want esac to our our program review process is a teacher-led process and we do facilitate from the ideal team but

187we really lean into our teachers as you know leading the process this year they took you know like they didn't have anything for us to like respond to right away so what i'm planning to do differently next year is rather than overview and then it was like all at the end the feedback part what we're going to do differently is be more spend more time at a session on a one specific topic go deep get feedback and then the teachers can use that to guide their next steps and i think just for everybody to know so we're high school math is on the on the table for next year we've got some other review teams that are going to need community feedback and engagement like our new health standards is as an example people will

188have a lot of opinions about that and so we definitely want to make sure that we're providing a rich enough experience that people do feel like they can be contributing in those meaningful ways as we're figuring out how to navigate new health standards we're looking at k-5 literacy and social studies so we've got we've got some big ones on the way so i appreciate that feedback and i agree with you i think we're going to probably end up adding more so we had three meetings this year i think we may need more meetings and people seem to have an appetite for that too especially once the they felt like their voices were part of the process thank you for bringing up esac director thompson i think that's an important thing for our community to know

189that it does go through this process as well and esac is a committee of the school board so it is part of the process and i just want to make sure that we're all aware of time and director wilhelm garber's clerk sorry no thank you i i will echo the esac affirmation and just the general affirmation that i think having more conversation is is and can always be helpful for us and for our community i did want to highlight then to the community to say if you haven't yet seen it because i will say that i didn't ever watch a workshop before joining the board because i didn't understand what they even were really and it's long so from our last workshop we were presented more of the information that is how it got on

190the consent agenda so i just think it's important to name that it was before the board we have been able to engage and have conversation we did receive feedback from some of your fellow educators and be able to hear some of the reports of how we got there in view of the 2022 minnesota mass standards we were able to hear and talk a little bit about concerns our community has raised for instance related to having accelerated options and how that can fit within this so i just would point that people to that as well as i think that is a helpful document you can link to that with some more information and then i'll just say i think the the other piece personally i think of where where i'm at is i just want to

191acknowledge that i think change can be challenging and i think there are ways that i know i had my own experience of education at different points along the journey and i don't like to admit how long ago that was but it wasn't yesterday and and so i think being in an ongoing learning process together collaboratively and recognizing you know i think we all care about our our students we care about the outcomes for our students and so continuing to be in dialogue absolutely value that even as i know i want to continue to have a posture of learning from you all as subject matter experts and that's the last thing i'll say is a significant part of my body background is in higher educational leadership and i led and developed programming and curriculum and the

192challenge of when folks are outside of the sphere where you it's important for us to ask questions to be able to do these things and to also turn to you and say okay so like i i can add you know please help us understand what you're doing and how you're seeking to help our students and so i think for me the thing that moved me to a where i was comfortable with the consent even as we're going to vote differently you know do it this way is because at the end of the day i looked at who was a part of this review and to have all of your colleagues say okay here's what we've been trying out here's what we've been playing with here's where we're at here's why we think there's some space

193for consistency and coherency so all those things is why i'm like okay let's do it and then let's continue the work with our community so thank you for that and also just to let our community know i i have shared the the link to the workshop video for people that had questions or concerns and also this is our historical practice as a board and we are not alone in this historical practice that we receive an update on curriculum and have an opportunity as a board to ask questions and discuss it with those of you who are the subject matter experts and then it appears on our consent and we were transparent about that at the workshop that that's how the process was going to go and it's because it is our historical practice and we

194are not alone in that so just you know setting everybody's expectations also i do just want to give my personal experience so i have my eldest child went through hopkins and started in a program that some of you might know umt ump which is the university of minnesota talented youth mathematical program and you can start that students can start that at in sixth grade and so my student did that and 10 years ago they completely revamped how they teach mathematics and it is in alignment with what we are doing now here in hopkins and i won't say we're behind the eight ball or we're late because this is something that's been a progression in the mathematical field and i will say personally this was a very difficult transition for my child who is an amazing

195computer and by that i'm using the historical word this is someone who can run computations and you know who i'm talking about um basically showed up in kindergarten able to do simple algebra in in her head so the shift from the function based computational mathematics was really really difficult there were tears there were tantrums it was really really hard but at the end of the day this is i would say the leader in the state on mathematical instruction and um when that shift went to the more concept based where it was about the um the concept of mathematics instead of the computation and coming to a right answer um it opened up a whole new world of mathematics and i think that's what we are talking about now in hopkins and it is the way

196of mathematics um the i think the the leader in our state did it 10 years ago and um i think almost every district is falling in line with that and also the standards that we are expected to um and are being assessed on are in alignment with that as well and so we need to i'm not saying this is the perfect curriculum to do that but it is the direction we need to go so with that i would look for a motion to approve the um the i am imagine i am grade six through eight math materials purchase so moved i have a motion is there a second second i have a motion and a second any further discussion seeing none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the chair votes aye

197and the materials are approved thank you so much for your time and for being here tonight i like having extra math thank you thank you team for being here so late and for all of your work thank you and that takes us to our next item of new business which is the ap stem grant approval i would like to invite our presenters to the table and turn it over to dr mary puri reed thank you chair andresen so we did share in a previous board update that hopkins high school was recently awarded a seventy five thousand dollar grant from mde and this is to expand our advanced placement and stem offerings and we do need board approval in order to advance forward so i am thankful for carla levon our cte coordinator and john sammler

198our ap coordinator to be here this evening first of all thank you for your work in putting together the grant application but also thanks for being here this evening and providing further context thank you so much for having us tonight and dr mary puri reed this is the last time that i will be presenting anything to you so thanks for your partnership and really look forward i enjoyed working with you over the last nine years so thank you thank you we are excited to tell you that we have been awarded a seventy five thousand dollar grant which will expand our ap courses including ap business and enhancing our ap computer science with the possibility of adding ap cyber security yeah so we have a pretty robust ap program already and this grant was really targeting

199advancing stem-based work and so we applied to to expand our ap stem-based stuff so again computer science principles is the course we already offer so we're looking to redesign that and make it even more appealing to a wider audience of students business and finance is brand new from the college board starting next year so we'll be right up front with that and we'd like to offer that up and there's a definite interest and a course full of students interested to take it already and cyber security is a new course offered by the college board starting next year and so again hopeful plan that this is a three-year grant that we would maybe implement that towards the end of the three-year cycle so goals would be to increase equitable access to expand our participation in the

200ap stem coursework our goals that we stated in the grant were expanding our students of color multilingual learners low-income students and female students it was interesting when i did a walkthrough with dr palmer of our cte spaces she did notice the gender and equity in our classes that a lot of our stem classes are still pretty heavily male dominated and so we want to really work towards getting that message out and maybe even starting earlier in the middles and elementary schools to give that message that anybody can be in stem strengthen our stem pathways in improving the rigor and engagement um building a clearer pathway from middle school um and showing them what that pathway can be in cte and our ap stem courses and then to increase student readiness for college and career opportunities

201um how do we measure success we're um an easy metric to take measure of is exam participation that's a metric that the college board uses to measure school to school just number of exams given so offering more courses or getting more students in there makes us look better it improves our access to students and helps us be even more comparable or excel as we already have with other surrounding districts look at the scores again scores are important maybe not the most important thing is participation but they also matter and we are always looking to make sure that we're preparing students properly and then reducing achievement gaps between those underserved student populations that we mentioned are trying to make it more equitable or more appealing to all audiences that we have at the school we did

202have to commit to tracking data over these three years so that so the things that we committed to tracking was access and participation enrollment that would be enrollment in these courses that we mentioned before overall ap stem enrollment and then the subgroups that we talked about before how do we collect this over the three years so we're going to be collecting data from the user groups or the students that are in enrolled in these courses over time tracking movement even from middle school coursework what have they been taking to what kind of ap or cte or stem courses even beyond that that they might continue in and then another aspect of this grant which was interesting was the desire from the state to have participants try an automatic enrollment pilot one of the factors that

203feels like a barrier with advanced courses is is that there could be barriers either implemented intentionally or non-intentionally by the school we don't do that at hopkins but still there's sometimes barriers of perception so automatically enrolling students that demonstrate they possess the skills to be able to excel in an ap class and then having a conversation with them this was derived by someone that we've talked with who has started that implementation and wants to see this go statewide so we're agreeing to do that as well with our enrollment to help increase participation in these courses and i think that's it so in order for the money to flow to the district we need your approval and i just want to give a shout out to laura hudsell she has been a very very valuable addition

204to our district she's very in tune with what's going on and in this grant processes and she's super easy to work with and just super thankful for her help with these grants agreed thank you um i'm sorry did you have anything you wanted um so i am really excited about this but i will thank you for being here tonight and any questions or feedback from board colleagues chair andreson yes one quick question i promise it's quick what happens after the three years great question um i the i think the intent and feel free to correct me um is the nice thing about these programs is we have a really robust ap curriculum and course already so a lot of the um the the heavy duty expense and groundwork is in the inception of them so

205this is really funding that time putting money aside for staff to help ensure that we have classes that run for these because oftentimes new courses may not have the fullest enrollment although i believe all of these do on their own but ensuring that we're staffing for that and then buying the appropriate supplies to really make the curriculum pop getting the teachers training they're already all signed up for training this summer the ones that are running for this fall so um once they're up and going in three years i often say is like when you start to get your head on as an ap teacher um then it kind of can roll on its own and can follow under normal budgetary flow do you agree yep thank you and thank you so much for doing this

206and leading this charge this is excellent and i'm very excited about it yeah thank you um i am particularly intrigued by this automatic enrollment pilot um i'm i really want to hear a report on what the impact of that is after we've implemented it um because i just think that's an excellent um way to kind of reduce that i'd self-imposed barrier i think um at this point i mean we did hear that oftentimes students don't feel encouraged certain students don't feel encouraged to enroll and i think that we've done a lot of work in hopkins to to be explicit about encouraging students to take um ap courses but this is it totally flips the script like you don't need to encourage what what would happen is um students engaging in a conversation as to why

207they don't feel comfortable at this time right so it's a very different um dynamic and i'm really intrigued to see what the outcomes of that are so thank you chair andreson yes clerk wilhelm garvers one sentence comment thank you two sentences uh the second is just to say um as we were speaking about with the solar panels earlier which you may may or may not have been here for we're talking about connections and with wanting to build pathways for stem just thinking about the power of our robotics team for instance and how there is a community event in which a bunch of younger kids came and so my four-year-old uh and a bunch of our friends all went to that and so getting to see these opportunities in our district uh just to help build

208imagination and anything we can do to help support and advocate for that and making this a long-term uh ap availability of stem is wonderful and we're just grateful thank you thank you for your support wonderful so i would look for a motion that the board approves the above ap stem grant so moved i have a motion is there a second second i have a motion and a second any discussion seeing none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the chair votes aye and the ap stem grant is approved thank you so much thank you congratulations thank you both thank you appreciate it and i have forgotten to give you the response from district 287 um this is a quick response it's the estimated cost based on what our director of special education

209gave 287 for projected referrals um the district 287 bills on that and then cleans up on the actual as the year goes on cool thank you you are welcome so that takes us to our 10-year ltfm plan resolution i would invite our um presenters up to the table and turn it over to dr mary piri reid thank you chair andriessen welcome andrew and gino so um for our community members this agenda item is um required by the state of minnesota mde so all school districts are required to develop and submit a board approved 10-year long-term facility maintenance or ltfm plan to mde and this plan qualifies districts for state aid and local levies to fund deferred maintenance h back upgrades accessibility improvements health and safety capital projects etc and so um i am appreciative of

210our partner site logic for working with us on developing the plan thank you gino for your leadership and we'll turn it over to you for further context thank you thank you board um tonight we we will be as brief as we need to be and be able to answer any questions that you may have before i begin i i don't know too many districts in the state of minnesota that have a brand new facility director who also has a significant referendum that was just passed and some significant work in the area of long-term facility maintenance and i would just say behind the scenes he's doing a lot of great work for your students your staff and your community and i um i just wanted you to know that um tonight we're going to talk briefly

211about a program review for long-term facility maintenance we're also going to discuss the actual projects that we have in in play and so again if you have any questions throughout the presentation feel free to stop and ask we'll also take time at the end if you have questions so just as a review long-term facility maintenance is a funding source that the state of minnesota provides with that funding source is also required to submit an annual plan approved by the school board and the intended purpose is really to make sure that you are protecting the assets of your facilities keeping them dry safe and comfortable for students to learn in one of the analogies are one way to look at long-term facility maintenance what typically qualifies is if you were to take your buildings and be

212able to shake them upside down anything that stays attached to the building would qualify for deferred maintenance or long-term facility maintenance so like for like replacements so in building your plan really there are a number areas that we wanted to focus on and from from the standpoint of the district you want to be able to assess and understand the current conditions of your assets and the systems of your your facilities it's important to have that be objective and and sound in data that has been gathered so we've looked at every single site and to make sure that we have that accurate picture we want to make sure that there is a standard that's applied to every school in your district and make sure that that is again dry safe and comfortable we want to prioritize

213the greatest needs to align with both your budget and your standard and then we also weigh important other considerations and and those other important considerations is data is one piece that we look at equipment but we also want to be able to talk to your principals and your building leaders to see if they have other priorities that that data might not have come up with concerns so those are some of the areas that are considered in your plan when when community members and families walk into your facilities and i am one of those people that have spent countless hours and days in your gymnasiums you see shiny floors you see shiny terrazzo but you don't understand what goes on behind those buildings what what makes those those areas function and it's a complex system and

214so i put our our 16 categories that we use as far as assessing your facilities to make sure that all parts are working together and congruently our long-term facility maintenance planning dates back to right after you approved the last plan in june so starting in july we have assessed all 14 of your facilities and then from there we've done a significant amount of work organizing all of the assets into potential projects categorizing what has the greatest needs to make sure that you have a comprehensive plan this year we did meet with all of your your facility leaders to make sure that they understood what what was coming forward in the plan that affected their buildings and also listened to their perspectives of other concerns that they had and so i think this plan reflects a

215combination of what the findings in our assessments have resulted in i think you'll see that it also reflects some of the topics that have come up with principles and then just some current themes that are going on within the district other other items that we want to make sure that we do very well especially in the next three to five years with your ltfm is that we coordinate with your referendum projects we want to make sure that we're not shutting down all of your facilities so programming can go on in the summer at facilities while other facilities are are being worked on for other projects so this was a really thoughtful plan that required a lot of time intensity from from gino and his team so again just kudos to the the work that has

216been done to get to this point today so a long-term facility maintenance plan is based out of 10 years the most important two years of that plan are the first two years you want to make sure that you have a lot of clarity with the projects that are going on because those are the projects that will be going out to bid and so you want to make sure that they fit into the budget that you have in the standard and that they are your greatest prioritized needs so we spent a great deal of time looking at your 27-28 plan within that tenure cycle so what we've come up with in that plan is about eight million dollars of projects a little bit more than eight million in projects in your 2027 and the back end

217of those projects in 2028 there are approximately 16 million seven hundred thousand dollars of projects that gives you a grand total in two years of approximately 25 million and five hundred thousand dollars that fits in alignment with what your typical long-term facility maintenance plan you sell bonds every two years and that falls in alignment with with how this has been done in the past some of the district-wide themes that that you'll see play out in this plan is refreshing carpeting and flooring making sure again that there's a consistent standard across every facility your parking lots your roofs stormwater improvement you also have a lot of pool updates that are going on making sure that the bleachers are up to date accessibility is in order and that there's a significant amount of retiling that is being

218done to your pools there are some theater improvements that are part of the priority to make sure that lighting can be addressed in your theaters and then of course HVAC and mechanical systems are always a main focus of districts and their LTFM plans so breaking down that 27 28 plan and these are projects that are over five hundred thousand dollars significant for the board to be aware of the high school tennis courts are being redone resurfaced completely the all the courts themselves are being redone gatewood parking lot gatewood utility improvements along with the parking lot north middle school roof and north middle school pool retile and then in 28 some other projects that are going on are the north middle school parking lots glen lake is looking at carpet replacements and then we have some

219significant work here at this facility in the mechanical areas and then last but not least metal brook parking lots are a significant project that will be in your first two years outside of the the two-year part of your 10-year plan just to look at your expenditures they stay pretty even throughout the 10 years at about 13 million dollars and as you can see in the little pinwheel that's there below all of your schools are reflected in here so all of the the facilities are are getting what they need to make sure that they are up to the standard expected by the school district in your community we break down the 10-year plan into facility costs what what would be spent in looking at the projects throughout the 10-year cycle so you can see by by

220facility what those costs are assigned by total projects at each site and then you also on the next slide we take those projects and we break them into the state's formulas and codes to make sure it aligns with the submittal so that's how we have gone into building your plan just for historical reference you can see the graph that is on this slide it looks at your bond cycle there is one bond cycle that looks a little different than the others and that i believe was in 2007 and that in that year the board decided to do a three-year cycle so the projects were based out of three years rather than two so you can see it's pretty level outside of 2007 the one bar that you see that is in 2006 would be bonds

221that this board would be able to consider for this plan and that would be discussed with ellers in likely in august they felt very comfortable with the facility plan as as proposed and feel that the projected funds needed for that fits in alignment with your financial position so we we had comfort knowing that ellers was comfortable with the plan proposed so as we look at next steps the minnesota department of education last thursday posted their spreadsheets that we will update to make sure they reflect your plan the board would need to seek approval of this plan and then on behalf of the district the plan would be submitted due by the end of july so we're a little bit of ahead of schedule but you also don't have a board meeting in july so it's

222important to get ahead of it and then last but not least in partnering with ellers they will be looking forward to meeting you and meeting with you in august to finalize bond details any questions thank you so much i appreciate the the thorough presentation any questions or feedback director hyman chair dracen thank you so much for such a detailed presentation i know this is a very complicated puzzle to put together so i appreciate it one clarifying question has the 10-year plan been written or finalized or is that still i guess i just want some clarification as to the that last slide like is it done yeah is it going to be done what what are we voting on yeah so your 10-year plan is done what we've done is we've already placed them into the

223categories that we we created our own spreadsheet at the time because the state spreadsheets weren't ready so what we need to do is to take this information now and put it in the state's updated spreadsheet so every part of the 10-year plan is ready to go for tonight we just need to put them on to the state's worksheets thank you for that clarification what slide is that it would be slide 15 thank you and then chair anderson yes and then kind of to your point about the most rigor is in these first two years so we're required to make this 10-year plan right we're stewards of tax dollars in all of these buildings as dr mary perey reid said earlier they are our buildings and so we make this plan to make sure that we

224have both we've allocated money and attention right appropriately into the future but these first two years are obviously where the most is known so if something changes in one of the buildings and there's a reason to add a project like every year we will revisit this and we'll see 2029 shift potentially correct correct chair and reason yes director tonson what one more process question just to be sure i'm clear are are we going to see the the because this slide deck isn't the actual plan right this is a report on the plan did do you guys come back at our next june meeting or or do how does that work chair injuries and for the i believe the 10-year plan is in the slide deck correct um it is live 15 yes they they are

225simply because mde did not release the spreadsheets they're just my understanding and correct me if i'm wrong you you after this is approved or if this is approved we'll move that data from the spreadsheet you have created into the official mde spreadsheet correct but it will be simply a shifting of data got it this slide deck is a representation of the plan it is which you're going to then upload into mde spreadsheet because it has to also go through mde approval right before we can start work correct good question any other questions um i just have to say as someone who has to read resolutions that i appreciate the brevity of the one before us tonight we do not have to waive the reading um so i would like um uh i would uh ask

226for a motion um to adopt the resolution for independent school district 270 the fiscal year 28 long-term facilities maintenance 10-year plan um yeah i would look for a motion and then i'll read it or i'll just read the whole thing be it resolved that the school board of independent school district number 270 state of minnesota approves the fiscal year 28 long-term facilities maintenance 10-year plan so i have a motion is there a second second i have a motion and a second any discussion chair andreson yes i'm just concerned about voting on saying that we've seen the 10-year plan when we haven't actually seen the 10-year plan and i'm just being a stickler for the language in the resolution um yeah so that we're approving it yeah that that we are approving the long-term facilities maintenance

22710-year plan and we haven't technically seen the plan except for the one that we just saw on the slide deck right but that's not the plan that gets submitted to mde and so i just want to raise that as a concern that we're not actually reviewing the actual plan in addition to the spreadsheet that you provided on slide 15 is it what is the plan yeah well if i can i can absolutely go into it and so this this might be fun i i like it uh so we'll see what you think of this but no you're no you're fine you're absolutely fine so one of one of the things that's um you have uh whether it's skyward or um whatever student management system you use um we have our own system called my my

228site iq and so in my site iq we've taken all of your assets and we've put them into this this repository and they are lumped into projects and so everything that you saw on slide 15 lives in this plan right here and each of these items um we can pull open what each of these projects are and they tell you what you're spending money on district landscaping and um and so within that plan it has a code and that code aligns with what the state coding is in in your in your plan and so as you can see we started in your years 27 and 28 and all of your projects are in alignment in each of those years and they will go all the way to 28 what's nice about this plan is that

229if there's something in 29 or 30 that you want to move up we just move it in the year and that recalculates the the projected estimated cost of that plan so it's highly dynamic so this in fact is your 10-year plan and if we move across into the cycles you'll see your 10-year plan that lives financially in this bar graph as well here thank you thank you for clarifying that and sharing that information yeah and then how does that then translate back to what we see in spreadsheet form on slide 15 which goes all the way to 2036 so each of these items that are categorized have a project type and if you look at the screen here we have project type by code and these are all the codes that the state uses in

230the 10-year facility plan and so all of your projects are coded based on what they are doing and then we take that and export that into the state's form and so what we didn't want to do is to bring a form that you didn't get to see as a as a board ahead of when the the board packet was released so we took our own copy and we we looked at it from a standpoint to give you as much information as we could without having that form ready to go and so i think um just for a community's reference because i think the the um the type is very small but um on the the 10-year plan by ltfm category there is the ltfm finance code and is that what you're talking about the the

231coding for mt mde yes and so you can see that there um and then there's also one by building which i appreciate both um scenarios being able to see that for our so what we will be approving tonight is not necessarily um what it will look like for mde but the projected costs and the projected ways that it will be spent yeah the projects that are in the plan thank you any further clarifications questions sharing reason yes um i did go back to last year and we did do essentially exactly this thing except for you know the spreadsheet versions looked a little bit different but we didn't have some kind of state document incidentally uh last year's 2027 calendar number said it was going to be ten thousand twenty three dollars and 110 million twenty

232three thousand dollars compared to oh eight million eight hundred thousand we did do the same thing in our past years too nice well that's nice cheaper good job don't worry we're spending it don't worry we can spend the next year where that 16 number is yeah yeah that number is good yes clerk will home garvers um so i think just uh just to say i think it if i'm hearing director hyman what you're raising for us uh is that the resolution which is something we could we can choose to call roll and vote on that's what we have before us before us right now is that we see the general categories as you superintendent mary perey noted this has the categories with the general sense of expenditures what we do not have before us or

233in our packet is the exact breakdown of where the what all of the body of work which you presented to us back in i think february originally um was the the body of work that's been done over these last months to get to this presentation tonight to come up with the the actual stuff of our tenure plan and the project timeline you know all of the different aspects that are happening we don't have that exact information of like at the high school they will be replacing all of the lights like that's not in our packet tonight what we're what we're being asked to move on the resolution is to say given all of what what you're bringing forward in summation we're saying yes or no to that so but that's what you are naming is

234we don't actually have the full breakdown of everything in front of us you know what that is and you've brought that forward in a some in a summary document form for us tonight correct correct thank you and the breakdown is in my site iq which school leaders department leaders have access to site logic who else has access to my site iq head custodians yeah i think all of your district leadership team does i don't know if your head custodians do i don't think they do folks in my department i think john wetterwood anybody who basically gets involved in our construction meetings we don't exclude anybody for any reason really and then i think for the public we could all always post the actual plan on our website and forward it to board members once we

235submit it to the state would be excellent that's your injuries yes just just to affirm i given the long history that we have of doing long-term facilities maintenance planning with you all that's all been positive i'm i'm fine to move forward and i would i love the idea of also posting it so that that way folks have questions they can do a deeper dive and we can champion things that we're really excited about um with one another great any further discussion seeing none uh clerk call the roll yes uh shannon and reeson aye rachel heartland aye johanna hyman aye brook roper aye kai thompson aye sarah wilhelm garbers aye jiming jao is absent this evening so all who are present have voted aye chair and reeson thank you clerk thank you for being here this

236evening um and i just want to quickly as an aside say that um i have also been impressed with your tenure here in hopkins um i have i am at a site and i have seen you multiple times this year i ran into you in the hallways and i i was like oh are you here to fix blah blah blah and you were like no i'm just doing a check-in this is what i do i walk around and i check in on things that is remarkable service to our district and to our families and staff so thank you so much for the work you do awesome i really appreciate that thank you chair and reeson yes can i add to that story yes so north had a staff versus student basketball game i think it

237was last week so i texted a picture of the scoreboard which was not working and they were they're like what what's the score right the kids are like what's the score so i i sent it to gino the scoreboard doesn't work you know what and he's like we're on it right so this is the response that everyone in our system gets from gino when we're saying hey something needs to be attended to something needs to be fixed and you've really hit the ground running and thank you for that i appreciate that thank you and thank you andrew for all of your work we appreciate our partnership with site logic thank you and with that um we get to go to our board member reports so you can stay for those if you'd like but you

238certainly don't have to sitting back there's okay okay thank you um last time clerk wilhelm garbers should we start with you i have um very repeatedly been either first or second so okay start with someone else um director thompson uh thank you my name is kai thompson i am on my third year in the board um i have three kids in the district from fifth to tenth grade um i really don't have much of a board report this evening so i will uh pass it on towards treasure heartland thank you um i'm treasurer rachel heartland this is my fifth year on the board and i have three children in our district and i mentioned our board audit committee meeting um our the lac had an end of the year meeting in person because our one

239it was the end of the legislative session and two our much treasured legislative liaison um katherine callahan who was provided i think it's 13 years possibly 14 years of service to the district advocating for the district and our students and our staff and our families at the legislature is leaving is departing the district at the end of the month and so we met to celebrate her and her work um and that has involved very heavy lift from the lac trying to fill her shoes while a replacement person is found and let's see i also attended the final band concert a few final band concerts and so i second year recognition of um miss tycast and then also she did said very eloquently and i won't try to repeat it but just the the work down

240into the elementary schools and the middle school is all of those music teachers that provide so much that you can't have this masterful performance of seniors if you don't have instructors uh in third grade listening to recorders and so it was really beautiful to watch and as you mentioned may is very busy so let's see gosh what other events that we have we went to the retirement ceremony earlier and we've got i think all of us board members but i know we have like the virtual edu graduation celebration and i think the american indian education they have a ceremony coming up for their seniors and so there are lots of ways that the community can still get involved in celebrating students across our district good evening i'm rota mary peri reid superintendent i have provided

241my board report already but i do i should have had a slide highlighting some of the um events and graduation ceremonies coming up so i just want to take a minute to invite our school board and community members to we have our t plus transition plus graduation is tomorrow at 1 p.m and that is at the lenox community center in st louis park and that same evening so tomorrow june 3rd is the american indian eagle feather ceremony that treasure heartland just mentioned i believe we are honoring one senior scholar at that event we've had a truly amazing partnership with growing for grief and that is coming to an end and yes there are some significant uh funding issues funding challenges um that open house growing through grief open house is on thursday june 4 from

2423 30 to 5 30 at park tavern in st louis park and director contreras is correcting me that t plus graduation is here okay here in the small theater instead of at lenox okay thank you for that and then of course we have our commencement ceremony for all of our hopkins high school seniors and our virtual edu seniors that will be next wednesday june 10 at roy wilkins beginning at noon yes and i'm looking for does anyone know when the a b e graduation is the 12th friday the 12th eisenhower here so here eisenhower 7 p.m june 12th thank you fonda so those are some very important events coming up thank you thank you hi everyone my name is shannon andresen i am in my seventh year on the board um and i have a

243graduating senior this year um and a um hopkins grad and i work as a paraprofessional at gatewood elementary and i have some things to report i wanted to um add on to rachel's announcement that we are at the lac we are saying goodbye to catherine callahan um and i think that for those uh people who are um deep in the culture of educational advocacy at the state level they all know catherine um because it is thanks to her leadership that we have had one of the most impactful lacs in the state we are continually set up as the model and we have set the standard for other districts across the state and it is because of her and she has developed really significant relationships with lawmakers as well as the people who actually write the

244bills so she has been an incredible asset to the district and also just to education um and i thank her um for all of her service and all she's done through the years like she literally watches um hearings at the legislature like for fun and and comments on it and gives us all updates like i i it's going to be hard to replace her um i also attended the last um seek meeting of the year which is our special education advisory council it was a a great um event wrapping up the year and then i personally really enjoyed hearing um exploring what topics and our changes that caregivers would like to see for next year um it was a really nice way i think to to wrap up the year and to get started for

245another one and then um director xiao and i attended the avid graduation which is one of my favorite events um every year they uh the hopkins high school hosts a special graduation for avid scholars at this event we learn about each graduate where they are headed after hopkins high school and then each graduate also honors a teacher who had an or staff who had an impact on them and it's a truly wonderful event we also learned some great statistics some um dr mary perry reed shared with us already but i'd like to share them with you um so of our current avid seniors they have a hundred percent graduation rate a hundred percent completed basic requirements for admission to a four-year university a hundred percent took the act many more than once those that took

246it more than once showed a minimum of three point improvement with the highest improvement being 14 points 85 took at least one ap course during high school and 95 are planning on attending a two-year or four-year college next year those are great statistics and then um some historical trends for the program the previous three graduating classes of hopkins avid students show college persistence that means staying in college for a second year eight percent higher than national averages the national average is around 80 percent each year and hopkins avid averages around 88 percent and then this persistence trend is particularly strong for educational benefit students in avid who persist at a rate of about 92 percent which speaks to the great work um ms heimlich does with the seniors on finding scholarships and breaking the poverty

247cycle that can burden those families across generations so my deep gratitude to the work that's being done and then also thank you to avid district director matt cappell for gathering all this information and sharing it with us oh 93 percent of our cna students passed the state certification test which is amazing that means they get to go work um terrific news so thank you i will turn it over to director roper vice-chair roper sorry okay that is amazing um and um that's amazing i'm so happy about the cna i have a quick question before i start do we know where the american indian graduation is tomorrow it is starts at five with the location it's here in the wetlands cafe the wetlands cafe oh i have five five to eight um they did request an

248rsvp for food they provide food okay all right um hello everyone my name is brook roper i've been serving on the board for three years now i have two incredible children i mean two incredible children in the district um who again hi it's probably watching um they're getting pretty excited for the end of the school year um as we all are um i think it's so funny that some of the teachers that i work with are doing like this countdown every day it's just like something new and so um i just want to just start by saying giving a shout out to our amazing educators who have made this year um an amazing experience for our our students and our families i understand what you are up against i understand the difficulties that you may

249have experienced um and some of the challenges that you for some of the challenges that you undergo as an educator but your work is never um unappreciated so thank you so much for teaching our wonderful students and bringing them into another successful um year i'm excited to see what they our students do next year um i would say um another another um update oh so freedom school so there is a opportunity that paris sent us out from freedom school that you can be a read aloud guest so i have been a read aloud guest for three years at freedom school i did it in minneapolis i did it over at hopkins and it is a wonderful experience you could pick out a book and you read to the students um if you don't know about

250freedom school is it a it's a program that is heavily focused on literacy um and it has an amazing curriculum and so if you have not received that link i'm more than happy to share it with you but um i think that you should sign up to be a read aloud guest it is the most reassuring thing that you could do um as a um as a um director and i will also say um again thank you dr mary perry-readen and shannon for sharing your statements about the um racism that we have been receiving in our district our district have been holding so much since the beginning of the year we have been navigating from the federal immigration to you know like all of the things like we have been responding back to back to

251back and so thank you to the community members um in a district of supporters who acknowledge the work that we're doing to make sure that our school district is um being effective in responding to these incidents it's not easy like minnesota have been a part of some very crazy um you know racial incidents and um we're doing our best to manage the the best that we can and so um thank you so much we are doing incredible work behind the scenes to make sure that this is something that we are not going to see next year um and just thank you to our supporters of the district who are working with us and then also just thank you to the folks who are giving us real feedback about what we can do better because that's

252how we best learn um and i will also say the work doesn't stop even though the school year is over almost um i'll still be doing some work like uh there's heading home hennepin that's going to be coming up on the 16th that i am a voting member of to you know talk about the health excuse me the housing options for um hennepin county and then also just doing more educational um events around the city so i'm going to take a break in july but june is going to just be full of just um continuing to do educational stuff and i'm also a little bit under the weather so my my brain is not working as properly tonight but thank you all so much again for a wonderful year to all of our board members

253who have navigated so much together and i just hope that you all have an amazing summer and that you are able to get the much needed rest that you deserve so thank you my name is johanna hyman this is my first year on the board i have two children in elementary school at meadowbrook a kindergartener and a third grader they are both very excited to be done with school everyone is very antsy for the summer and our neighborhood is can feel the energy which is exciting um i attended today the annual kindergarten field trip to the minnesota zoo and was very impressed by all the kindergartners new reading skills there they are reading full-on reading signs at the minnesota zoo um it's very very impressive and so good job to our kindergarten teachers and um

254i think we're gonna see an uptick in literacy and reading so i'm very excited about that um i am very excited looking forward to the senior walks if you don't know what those are to members of our community the seniors go back to their elementary schools and they walk through the halls and their caps and gowns and it's really a full circle moment and i also think that it's a special thing for elementary school students to see see themselves in older students and and where they can be in just a few years ahead of themselves director hyman can i share that those are scheduled for tuesday june 9 at each elementary school at about 9 45 a.m great thank you um i also wanted to just share the exciting news that the multi-sport dome construction

255is now underway so there is construction happening i know a lot of um people in our community don't know a lot about this but it is going to be a revenue driver for our district and it is very exciting that we will have a a space extra space during winter and fall and other seasonal issues we have here in minnesota for our um for our students and community to enjoy and finally i just wanted to say that we will have a um i volunteered for the booth at the hopkins booth at the pride parade which will be june 27th and 28th so if you are at pride please stop by and say hi at the hopkins booth that's all i have tonight i'll see you there see you there i'm sarah willhelm garber's she they

256and i would like to begin by wishing everyone happy pride it's pride month and um you could be like me and accidentally reply all to an email to the whole district so with your excitement about it being pride um thankfully it was just a very on-brand email for me um and just hope that um everyone whomever you are that you know that you can you're celebrated here in this district and as a part of that i was really grateful to have a meeting along with some school board members from other districts with prism who does organizing around lgbtq plus support in schools and working with school boards and was grateful for that i will also be at hopkins pride and then um i will come visit the hopkins booth at pride because my spouse will

257be at another booth and a four-year-old can't walk around by themselves i'm also grateful we're going to have a check-in with some of our student board reps with um one of the committees i'm on with skip tomorrow morning which will be good and i was grateful i got to tour meadowbrook this past week and was just lovely to be able to be there and um you know the long body of service that our principals had and just the amazing retention of teachers and staff at meadowbrook it was really just beautiful to hear about their community and then just to see the student-led art um that said you know happy pride and everyone's welcome here and just all of the manifestations of our values on all of the walls and here's student art with our values

258and it was just really beautiful to see all of that in action and um with that i just wanted to highlight uh as well that i spent some time after that visit looking at our hopkins literacy toolkit uh in depth and it's this amazing toolkit that we have that uh surfaces the work that's going on in our district and also as a parent who's kind of nerdy it made me really excited to make flashcards for my eventual kindergartener also as you've heard their graduations retirement ceremony all sorts of opportunities to be able to support and celebrate the amazing work of our educators and then the students themselves and their families as a part of that i'm looking forward to getting to be at freedom school this month i'm trying to find out exactly what book

259i'm supposed to bring to read in terms of reading level because my first pick is it's pride baby uh which is my four-year-old's favorite picture book in our household right now which may not be appropriate for fourth graders and above but it's really fun and uh a beautiful books are beautiful so that's wonderful uh i just wanted to then also name that them as you heard from chair andreson the monitoring committee following uh just both the bias and anti-semitic and um racial incidences and um posts and graffiti and all the things which are not okay that we've been taken really seriously in all the different ways um that we can and including on the monitoring committee picking up the policies and things that you named chair andreson and i just want to affirm as well

260that it's not okay and um we are committed to living out of values and to working um to working to hold both accountable persons who think it's okay to dehumanize people or anyone in our community and also to continue to support anyone who is harmed and so i'm grateful for the folks who have just really leaned in in that work of support and then finally with that just to say i'm so grieved and sad about the incident um the threat that was called in at the high school and i'm so grateful and respect so much the leadership both of our district and our community partners in coming together uh to ensure that that they're that the school is safe and i also just do grieve though for both students teachers and family members and community

261members just i hate that we live in a world where threats of violence like that are real um and that we need to take them seriously and so in view of that i just want to say that um thank you for caring and for um working towards a place of safety so i've been grateful it's been an honor to serve so far this year and um thank you for the opportunity and i take it um i don't take that responsibility or trust lightly so thank you thank you clerk will helm garbers and with that i would look for a motion to adjourn so moved i have a motion is there a second second i have a motion and a second any discussion seeing none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the

262chair votes aye and this meeting of the hopkins school board is adjourned at 9 52 p.m thank you everybody